The 13th Hourglass
by MandyQ
Summary: Harry and Ginny's trip via time turner returns them to a future they don't recognize. How do they get back the world they fought for? POST TDH. TDH spoilers. Harry x Ginny, some Narcissa x Lucius. Pls R&R. COMPLETE.
1. A Rare Trinket

**DISCLAIMER**: This work takes place in a fictional universe and contains characters, situations, artifacts, and inherent laws of magic that are the property of JK Rowling, Scholastic, and a teency bit WB. I am none of those people; so it's a mighty good thing indeed that I have made no money on this- nor should I. No infringement is intended- I merely sought to kill a plot bunny with fangs.

--o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o--

**NOW**

"Harry!" Ginny Weasley called to her fiancé from across the lawn. Harry Potter turned quickly and dashed across the grass to meet her. He was coming from the stands of the pitch and had barely gotten onto the grass when she'd called after him.

"I thought you'd be longer," Harry told her as the two of them caught up to each other. Ginny had been invited to play an invitational game of Quidditch on the Hogwarts pitch along with several other professional players who were alumnus of the school. Hogwarts had recently hired a new flying teacher from among the ranks of the International Quidditch League officials, and she had staged this game in hopes of getting more support for the school's Quidditch program. It was late August, just before the start of the school term, and the weather had been perfect for Quidditch.

"Didn't need to change," Ginny informed him, gesturing to her outfit. She was still in her Harpies uniform save her pads and outer robe. "We've got that autograph signing in Diagon Alley," she reminded him. "No reason to get undressed just to get dressed again."

"Right," Harry remembered. Ginny had told him weeks ago, but he could scarcely remember her schedule from one day to the next, let alone be expected to remember something he'd heard nearly a month ago. "How'd it go?" he asked her, largely out of a need to divert attention from his having forgotten her afternoon appointment.

"The match?" she asked. Harry nodded. "Well enough," she shared, taking his hand and walking with him toward the castle. "Some of the kids are really good," she shared. "Professor Lynch has only been here for a year, but she's really done good work. These were all sixth and seventh years that played us today, and they nearly beat us. All of us professionals; and they nearly won." Harry cut her off with a gesture as he was certain that he'd overheard a familiar but not altogether welcome voice coming from the stairs.

Sure enough, Harry's ears had been quite correct. He wondered whether he had ought to try and duck away as he watched the three Malfoys descending the stairs along with another couple and a red haired girl who Draco seemed to be paying a bit much attention to. Harry shook his head and looked back at Ginny. "What are they doing here?" he asked. Narcissa Malfoy had, in truth, saved his life once, but he still was in no way a fan of the family.

"Professor Lynch invited them," Ginny informed him. "That's her with the curly red hair," she gestured toward the group on the stairs again. "She says the broomsticks here are pathetic and she's hoping to get the Malfoys to buy all new ones. Her husband is Aiden Lynch, we saw him play at the World cup the year of the TriWizard tournament; he was seeker for Ireland." Harry nodded.

"Yeah," he answered. "I remember him. Who's the other girl?" Harry asked. It wasn't like he cared overmuch about Draco Malfoy's love life, but he had never quite been able to imagine his old foe being charming enough to have a girl look at him the way this one was at the moment. The group of Malfoys and Lynches made it to the bottom of the stairs, and before Harry realized that he really should move, they were walking past him.

"I don't know," Ginny admitted. "I think she's a friend of the professor's," she suggested.

"Looks like she's a friend of Malfoy's," Harry observed. He heard Ginny chuckle as he turned his head to look once again at the group passing by them. He locked eyes with Narcissa for a fleeting second, and gave her an uncomfortable smile. She did the same, and Harry couldn't help but think that there was something different about her appearance. Had she put on weight?

Once the group had passed, it occurred to Harry what was so off. He looked back at Ginny, who seemed to be wearing the same concerned and slightly put-off expression he was. "Did she look…?" Harry couldn't find the proper way to ask his question, but Ginny knew him well enough to assume correctly what it was he was asking.

"Yeah," Ginny agreed, nodding her head with her mouth slightly agape.

"Yeah," Harry affirmed, his own head nodding unconsciously in tandem with his fiancée's.

"Just what the world needs," Ginny said softly, "more Malfoys." Harry shook his head. The idea that Narcissa Malfoy was pregnant was even stranger than the idea of her first born romancing a girl.

"Let's go," Harry suggested, "before I think about it and lose my appetite." Ginny laughed out loud at him and nodded.

"Just let me grab my things," she asked, gesturing to the changing rooms. "You can come with me," she added. Harry nodded and held her hand as she led them through the doors.

Most of the other players had cleared out already. There was a reception being held in the Great Hall and it seemed as though the Quidditch pros were anxious for a good meal. Ginny snatched her travel satchel from the floor of her locker and handed it to Harry. "Do you mind?" she asked, gesturing to the bag as she pulled her robes and pads from the space.

"Not at all," Harry answered. He looked around the small room. He had years of memories of Quidditch matches, and the hours spent in here getting ready or celebrating. He watched as the last of the other players left the room in a group and he turned to Ginny, waggling his eyebrows. "You know, we're alone in here right now," he said, not able to help it when his cheeks started to flush.

"Harry!" Ginny exclaimed, flinging a towel from her locker at him. "We've no time for a proper shag," she informed him. "So don't even allude to anything like that."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Harry kidded. "I was simply alluding to the fact that you're running late."

"Poppycock, Harry," Ginny challenged, reaching into her locker for another handful of things that needed packing. Her hand landed on a small square box and she stopped what she was doing. Ginny shook her head as she picked up the box and turned back to face her fiancé. "I completely forgot about this," she said to him as she presented him with the box. "It's an engagement present," she told him. "From Professor McGonnagall; you know she's retiring?"

"No, I didn't," Harry admitted.

"Professor Lynch told me," Ginny stated, again turning to her things that needed packing. "Anyway, Professor McGonnagall said that this was something rare and that we deserved to have it."

"Should we open it?" Harry asked, turning the box over and over in his hands. He was itching to see what was in it. Likely it was the fact he had received so few presents as a child that spurred him to madness in the presence of a wrapped package, but whatever it was that caused it, Harry wanted to open his present.

"Go ahead," Ginny allowed. She knew this man well enough that he would go nutters were she to try and keep him from unwrapping the package; and he would wind up driving her equally crazy until she acquiesced. Better to skip the madness altogether and just open the package. And besides, Ginny wanted to see what it was as well.

Harry set Ginny's satchel onto the floor and then ripped into the red and gold metallic paper. He discarded the torn wrapping and pulled the lid off of the paperboard box it had revealed. Ginny peered into the box as she watched Harry withdraw the shining gold object from inside of it. "Ginny, do you know what this is?" he asked as he turned the metal in his fingers. Ginny shook her head.

"I've never seen one before," she admitted, reaching out to touch the shiny object.

"It's a time turner," he explained. "We can go back in time with this," he told her.

"Surely not now," Ginny countered, placing the last of her items into her satchel. "We've barely enough time to get a bite to eat and get to Diagon Alley."

"Time, Ginny," Harry said to her, stepping closer to her and wrapping the chain from the time turner around the both of them. "We'll come back to right this second. We'll not have lost any time at all. Let's use it," he encouraged.

"Harry," Ginny addressed him, frowning. "This is so unlike you," she admonished. Harry was not normally the kind to be so capricious. It seemed very out of character. Harry was a logical man; an administrator in the Auror office and not the kind of wizard who might use magic so impetuously.

"So I'm feeling spontaneous," he contended. "I thought you'd think it was romantic." Ginny fingered the fine gold chain that he had wrapped around them and looked into his big green eyes.

"I'm not complaining," she asserted. "It's just not like you."

"You're scared," he challenged. Harry didn't actually believe that for a minute, but he knew Ginny well enough to know that she would do just about anything to prove that she was fearless.

"Am not," she argued, "Let's go then." Harry smiled. He really shouldn't employ that trick as much as he did, but he wanted to use their new item. Harry spun the time turner over and over and over and the two of them watched as the building changed around them.

People came and went and light and darkness did the same again and again a thousand times over and at ever increasing speed. When the world stopped moving, Ginny frowned over at Harry and went to seat herself on the bench behind her. But there was no bench. Ginny fell hard to the floor, landing on her backside and glowering at Harry as she did. "You brought us back so far that they've not invented benches yet?" she asked facetiously. Harry shrugged and offered her a hand up. Ginny took his hand and stood herself up, dusting her trousers off and shaking her head.

"Sorry," Harry offered. Ginny shrugged and started toward the door.

"So when are we?" she asked. Harry smiled and shook his head, looping the gold chain around his neck and leading her from the changing room.

"You'll see," he answered.

Once they reached the exit to the pitch, Harry looked up and could not believe his good fortune. Several people seemed to be picnicking on the lawn not far from the Quidditch pitch. Two ladies sat on a blanket on a knoll to their right, clearly enjoying food that one of them was constantly pulling from a basket. The chubbier of the ladies, with gingery hair and wearing a bright yellow cape, was setting a feast out for the others. The darker haired lady sampled each of the delights as they came from the basket and seemed thrilled with the taste of every one. Before them, in a depression in the field, an auburn-haired gentleman with bushy whiskers and a much smaller man with a long and wispy beard were laughing and dueling halfheartedly with a pair of swords.

The Hogwarts castle loomed in the background, but without the ivy and the overgrowth that was so familiar to Harry and to Ginny. Harry pointed to the rubies glinting in the sword that the red haired man was wielding.

"Do you see, Ginny?" he asked.

"Harry, they'll see you!" Ginny insisted in a harsh whisper. She quickly pulled her wand from her leg holster and cast a disillusionment charm over the both of them. "Now," she said to him quietly once she was certain that they couldn't be seen, "what were you saying?"

"Look at the sword, Ginny," he encouraged, pointing again. Ginny's eyes grew wide and she looked to Harry, her clear disbelief plain across her face.

"That's…" she couldn't even say it, "that's the…"

"The sword of Gryffindor," Harry finished for her, not even managing to take his eyes off of the fencing match to look at her.

"So that…?" Ginny took a deep breath and composed herself. "Those are the founders?" she observed, her voice becoming a little louder. Ginny remembered herself immediately and spoke softly again. "That's Godric Gryffindor!" she whispered excitedly.

"And that's Salazar Slytherin," Harry pointed to the other man.

"Which means…." Ginny's jaw dropped wider. "That's Rowena Ravenclaw and Helga Hufflepuff." She shook her head and gasped. "I wish we could hear what they're saying," she commented.

"Let's get closer," Harry suggested. Ginny giggled under her breath, but agreed to move with him lest the charm break and they both be suddenly exposed.

"Careful there, old man!" Harry and Ginny stood in awe as they heard the voice of Godric Gryffindor calling to his friend; his _friend_ Slytherin.

"I appreciate thy concern, Godric," Salazar Slytherin called back to him, "but thou shalt take thine own advice!" Slytherin just then swept across Gryffindor's middle with his sword, leaving a smudge of ink across the younger man's tunic where it touched.

"Listen to them," Ginny whispered. "They really were friends." The two men laughed raucously as they sheathed their swords and went toward the blanket where the women and the food were sitting. Gryffindor had his arm around Slytherin's shoulders as Helga Hufflepuff pointed her wand to vanish the ink spot on Godric's tunic.

"Partake of repast!" Helga insisted, handing each of the men a hunk of bread from a loaf she had produced from the basket. The two men collapsed onto the blanket, greedily biting in to the offering of bread.

"We should get back, Harry," Ginny suggested. "This was such a good idea, though."

"You want to go back?" he asked. Ginny shrugged her shoulders.

"I'm hungry," she shared. "In case you forgot, I just played a match. And I can smell the fresh bread and the roasted meats from here. They're not exactly going to share their picnic with us, so let's get back to when we're from and get to Diagon Alley and eat something."

"There's a feast in the Great Hall at the moment," he reminded her. Ginny shook her head.

"I've been thinking about that, and the truth is; if we go in there we'll never get out in time. Let's just get to Diagon Alley."

"Alright," Harry agreed, pulling on the gold time turner chain so that it once again enveloped the both of them. He led Ginny back to the spot from which they had left; knowing that no one would see them returning there as no one had seen them leave. Once they were safely inside the building (which was oddly similar to its state in a thousand years), Harry spun the dial in the opposite direction from that which had brought them on their journey, and they watched again as the world shifted to and fro signaling their return to their own time.

When the movement ceased this time, Ginny did fall to the bench behind her to catch her breath. She looked up at Harry, who removed the time turner from them and put it in his trouser pocket. He then picked her satchel up for her, signaling that they should be on their way. Ginny grabbed her broomstick and followed her fiancé out the door and into the yard. The two of them hopped onto the broom; Harry in front, Ginny behind him, and took off.

They flew only as far as Hogsmeade, where they set down and caught their breath. "See you in Diagon Alley?" Ginny asked. Harry nodded. At the same time, and as if on cue, the two of them Disapparated; choosing to take the quickest, if not most comfortable, route to Diagon Alley.

Harry and Ginny joined hands when they arrived and he allowed her to lead him toward the Leaky Cauldron. Harry felt odd after his afternoon of sitting in the sun, time travel, and Apparition and he was fully convinced that his eyes were playing tricks on him. He recognized someone through the window of Florean Fortescue's who he was sure could not have possibly been there.

"I think my blood sugar is really low," he shared with Ginny. "Either that or my brain has been addled by the sun."

"Why's that?" she asked, stopping her forward motion and turning to face him.

"Because I thought I just saw Wormtail Pettigrew," he shared, shaking his head and trying to get his eyes to fix properly.

"Where?" Ginny quizzed in obvious disbelief.

"In Florean Fortescue's," he answered, pulling on her arm so that he might go back and get another look through the shop window. Ginny stopped him in his tracks with a tug on his arm and he turned to look back at her.

"Wormtail Pettigrew's dead, Harry," Ginny reminded him. "But that doesn't mean that everyone who ever resembled him is. And we just saw the Malfoys," she reminded him. "Your eyes are probably playing tricks on you. Probably post traumatic stress, as Hermione would call it." Harry smiled and kissed Ginny's cheek.

"I'm sure you're right," he said. "We did just see the Malfoys. And I'm tired and hungry. That's got to be it. Come on." The two of them started again toward a hearty lunch. They hadn't gotten but a few more feet down Diagon Alley before Harry spotted something totally unusual. "Tell me I'm not imagining that," Harry asked her, pointing as subtly as he possibly could at a man coming toward them on the far side of the street.

He had in his hands several lengths of chain; behind him several men and women were harnessed across their chests, the heavy chains attached to D-rings at their sternums. The man had to tug on the chains to get some of them to cooperate, but the others came without hesitation. "Not your imagination," Ginny allowed, looking closely at the strange collection of people. "And I've no idea what it is."

"Something strange is happening," Harry observed.

"Whatever it is," Ginny commented, "I'm sure it has nothing at all to do with us." She pulled his arm to start them moving in the direction of the Leaky Cauldron again. "Let's go eat."

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

As I said: this is a plot bunny with fangs. I hate time travel. I very rarely write about Harry and I NEVER write about Ginny. I hope you all are interested and that the strangeness near the end of the chapter is enough to get you reading the next one.

I still live for reviews.

-MQ


	2. A Silver Dragon

**WHEN**

Harry had almost stopped thinking about the people on leashes, and had entirely forgotten seeing Wormtail's possible twin in the ice cream shop by the time the giant plate of bangers and mash was placed in front of him. Ginny was happy enough to see her steak and kidney pie that she barely even touched the plate of bread and butter, which she would normally have devoured.

They always dined at the Leaky Cauldron when they were truly hungry, as they were less likely to be accosted by strangers in the dim dining room of the inn than under any of the multi-colored café umbrellas of the cafes in Diagon Alley proper. It wasn't as though either of them begrudged well wishers or autograph seekers, it was just that even the Boy-Who-Lived and the star chaser for the Holyhead Harpies needed a square meal in peace once in a while. Today's meal had afforded them unusual peace and quiet; and even the serving staff had refrained from giddiness or praise. Harry was finding it quite enjoyable.

"Are we still going to your parents' tonight?" Harry asked between bites. Ginny nodded.

"They're expecting us at half past six," she told him. "Mum's cooking a pile of food," she added. "We'd really ought not to fill up now."

"I'll be hungry again by then," he assured her, "I promise." Harry chuckled at her contention that he cold be spoiling his supper. She knew him well enough by now to know that there was no force in heaven or on earth that could keep him from Mrs. Weasley's cooking. Ginny thought for a second and laughed along with her fiancé.

"I believe you," she allowed, reaching across the table for the pepper grinder. Ginny was still looking at Harry when his smile fell from his face. He was nearly grimacing, he looked confused and put off; more so than he had in the moment of realizing that the Malfoys were expecting. "What?" Ginny asked, looking more intently at him. "What is it?" Harry shook his head and kept frowning. He gestured with his fork, which he hadn't put down since the food arrived, to the window they were sitting next to. He pointed past Ginny's shoulder through the glass at the Muggle street outside.

Ginny turned in her seat to look where he indicated. Her jaw dropped when she clapped eyes on what had certainly been the cause of her fiancé's consternation. There, on Charing Cross road, was a group of three centaurs. They were walking about freely, and carrying swords. It was clear that the muggles on the sidewalks were obviously aware of them, as they crossed to the other side of the street to avoid the centaurs on the walk.

"Do you see what I'm seeing?" Harry asked, his voice clearly indicating his disbelief.

"I see it," Ginny replied, shaking her head a little. "But I don't believe it." She turned back in her seat and faced Harry again. "This is strange," she said.

"No joke," he agreed, finally setting his fork down and taking the napkin off of his lap to set it on the table. "I should go look into this," he said. Harry's job as an administrator in the Auror office saw to it that he'd handled more than one minor crisis involving magical creatures in view of muggles. He'd had to reprimand more than one wizard responsible for such slips, but usually these involved house elves… occasionally a winged horse or a kneazle, but in Harry's memory, never a centaur. Centaurs weren't even under the control of wizards, and Harry wasn't altogether certain as to what had ought to be done about this.

In fact, Harry had never heard of a centaur outside of the Forbidden Forest and he was just as miffed by the appearance of three of them in London as he was by the fact they were on the muggle side of the Leaky Cauldron. Ginny looked again at the three centaurs and shrugged. "If you must," she allowed, wrinkling her nose at him.

"I really should," he shared. Harry stood and reached into his pocket, leaving a pile of Galleons on the table; more than enough to pay for lunch and a generous tip. "Besides," he added, reaching his hand out to Ginny, who stood up and put her own napkin down. "I've seen you sign autographs," he reminded her, "it's not that much fun." Ginny wrinkled her nose at him. "Come on," he encouraged, leading her around the table and toward the back door, leading to Diagon Alley. "I'll walk you to where you're going and then I'll head to the office."

"Alright," she agreed as they reached the door. "But do not be late to my parents'," she warned. Ginny took her wand from its leg holster and tapped upon the brick that opened the portal into Diagon Alley. The two of them stepped through the wall and onto the magic-lined walk as Ginny continued; "No matter how many years go by, my mum will never stop freaking out when any one of us are late. She still thinks that we're in grave danger all of the time and I'd rather not hear it out of her if you're not there by six thirty."

"I'll be there, Ginny," he assured her as they made their way down the cobblestone walkway of Diagon Alley. They were stopped in their tracks when a whirlwind of silver blew past them. All around them, people fell to their knees as this shimmering cloud of magic passed by and Harry felt a tug at the back of his robes, signaling that he had ought to do the same. "What is going on?" he asked, turning his head to see who had yanked him to his knees. He still held Ginny's hand, and she had followed him to the ground. Ginny looked none too pleased by this, and she turned her head as well to hear the answer to her fiancé's question.

"It's the prince!" the young flower seller, with her hand still on Harry's robes, told them.

"What?" Ginny asked. She was most confused. There were prices in London to be sure, but they were muggles and there was surely no way they would be casting magic in Diagon Alley.

"Not from London, are you?" the young woman asked with a shake of her head. She pointed then, to the end of the street. The silver cloud had begun to take shape there, near to the entrance to Knockturn Alley. It piled itself high until it appeared a full bodied Patronus of a dragon in true-to-life scale. Harry and Ginny heard 'oohs' and 'aahs' at the appearance of this enormous messenger, and then all of Diagon Alley fell silent waiting for it to move or to speak.

"My devoted subjects," the dragon obliged them by address. Harry cocked his head to the side and frowned. The voice that the Patronus was speaking with was oddly familiar to him, but somehow that was not at all a comfort as he watched the bowed heads of the people around him rise to behold the dragon. It spoke again. "Her Royal Majesty the Witch Queen wishes to give her regards to her most loyal and generous subjects," it announced. Witch queen? Harry and Ginny looked back and forth between each other and the messenger; unsure of what to think of this development. Since when had this been a monarchy? "She has been moved," the dragon continued, "by your outpouring of support and encouragement in this time of ill health. Her Royal Majesty wishes to reward her subjects for their devotion by once again receiving well wishers at the Palace. Effective immediately; her Royal Majesty will receive her subjects in the great throne room each day for three hours in the afternoon as her health permits."

With the end of the announcement, the dragon dissipated. People all over were standing quickly, dusting themselves off, and scrambling as though they were all very late to someplace. The flower seller behind Harry and Ginny had her wand out and she was shrinking and closing up her wares with some haste. Other shop owners were doing the same; turning 'open' signs to 'closed, and locking up doors and window shutters as though they might never return. Patrons, too, seemed to be dashing from the cafes and storefronts, some of them leaving behind full plates of food and large packages, all of them headed toward the Leaky Cauldron end of the Alley.

"What in the devil is going on?" Harry asked of no one in particular. The witch with the flowers answered him as she pulled her cloak over her shoulders and started moving along with the crowd.

"Didn't you hear?" she asked, her accent so think with cockney that Harry had to think about what she was saying as she continued, "the Witch Queen is allowing an audience!" she exclaimed.

"So, is that where everybody's going?" Ginny asked, shaking her head in disbelief as her eyes had caught on a wizard tying two chained and leashed persons to a hitching post outside of the Magical Menagerie.

"Aye!" the flower seller answered, in a tone that told Harry that she was quite impatient to join the stampede in earnest. She turned and darted off and was soon lost in the juggernaut.

"The hell?" Harry asked, pulling Ginny flush against the wall of the nearest shop in order to try and avoid being crushed by the mob that was rushing the portal.

"You're asking me?" Ginny said, trying to keep her wits about her as she watched the crowd.

"Something's wrong," Harry stated. Ginny shook her head and frowned at him.

"Do you think?" she asked, unable to keep the sarcasm and annoyance out of her voice. "Witch queen," she exhorted, "people on leashes, centaurs in muggle London…"

"The time turner!" Harry gasped at his realization.

"What?" Ginny asked, unsure if she had heard him over the din of the crowd that was still pushing by them.

"Time," Harry said to her. "Something's gone wrong with time," he commented. "We didn't come back properly."

"You think that's it?" she asked. Harry nodded. That had to be it. He remembered in third year when he and Hermione had used a time turner to save Sirius and Buckbeak; what had Dumbledore said…? There could be dire consequences. This would certainly qualify as dire. Harry looked around at the mass of people who were barely getting through the portal, but still shoving to pass through as though their very lives depended on it. He spotted a torn bit of newspaper blowing in the air.

"_The Daily Prophet_!" he commented, squeezing Ginny's hand.

"What?" Ginny asked him again. Harry had a bad habit of thinking aloud at times and she was not about to go without whatever ideas might be in his head at this moment.

"The newspaper," he said to her. "We don't even know that today is today," he added, pulling her slowly in the direction of the crowd. "We need to get our hands on the newspaper. We need to find the date. I saw the _Prophet_ this morning. If the date is the same, but the news is different; then we'll know for sure."

"This isn't enough to make you sure?" Ginny asked, shaking her head as she followed him. Harry looked at her as though to say that it was the best he could do to figure out to try and get hold of a newspaper.

"I'm sure it's something," Harry clarified. "We just can't know what."

"Think we should follow them?" Ginny asked. "I mean, it's pretty clear that I've not got to be at Quality Quidditch supplies at the moment- seeing as all the shops have closed."

"We should," Harry agreed. "We'll try and see a paper. Even the muggle paper might help. If …" Harry considered how to put it. "If _when_ we are right now," he settled upon, "there are centaurs walking the muggle streets, then we may get a better indication as to what's gone on by being out there."

"Well," she added, "It's not like we're going to learn anything in a deserted Diagon Alley," she allowed. "So, do we just follow the crowd?" she asked. Harry nodded.

It took them the better part of an hour to get their turn through the portal and out of the Leaky Cauldron. When they were finally in Charing Cross road, Harry and Ginny both gasped at the condition of the place. Here as well there were wizards in robed walking freely with people harnessed and leashed following behind them. House elves scampered to and fro; piles of packages teetering in their arms. Centaurs lined the streets; swords drawn at the ready, and all of them seemed to be heading in the same direction.

"The Palace?" Harry asked his fiancé for agreement. Ginny nodded. If everyone in their line of sight was headed to the same place and it seemed to be in response to the declaration of that giant silver dragon, then it was likely a safe bet that the Palace was in that general direction. Harry kept his ears open as they moved through the crowd toward wherever it was that they would end up.

The king was dead; that Harry gleaned from a teary-eyed witch telling her young granddaughter of how much worse the queen's already delicate health had grown after that. The prince was some sort of a tyrant; as was the Minister of Justice, and so it was the queen to whom the citizenry wished to endear themselves lest they be suspected of something that might wind them up in Azkaban or worse.

They snaked their way through London until they were within view of the building the crowd seemed so anxious to enter. Harry knew where they were. This was the Ministry of Magic; or it should have been. Where the visitors' entrance used to be in the form of a muggle phone box, now there stood an ornate marble dome with giant jewel encrusted double doors through which the throngs of people were passing. Centaurs with their swords drawn lined the path to the red carpet leading to the entry. People became less frenzied and more orderly the closer they got to their destination; likely a result of the shrinking distance between centaurs as they went.

"It's the Ministry," Ginny whispered. Harry nodded and squeezed her hand. "Or it was?" she added.

"In full view," he added. "And the centaurs…" he had no idea what to think. Harry and Ginny found themselves on the periphery of the queue leading onto the red carpet. They moved at the pace of the crowd, anxious to see the inside of the place.

As they stepped onto the red carpet, a centaur's sword suddenly blocked their path. Damn. Had he been recognized? He had been so caught up in the business of finding out what the hell had happened while he and Ginny were time traveling that he had forgotten to concern himself with the fact that the Harry Potter in this timeline (if, in fact they had landed themselves in an alternate version of the present) might be inconvenienced by his presence. The centaur pulled Harry and Ginny from the queue and steered them by the shoulders around the dome. As the three of them approached a series of columns, they opened up; exposing an entry much less auspicious than the one the crowd was passing through.

The centaur shoved the two of them through the door and Harry found himself reaching for his wand as he watched the marble close itself again. It was dark in here, and cramped, with a low sloping ceiling and only a few candles for light. Harry had a distinct feeling that he was in trouble. He looked at Ginny, who he could tell was considering going for her wand as well. The centaur stamped her foot on the stones of the floor and a fire lit itself in a grate beneath a giant golden mantle which Harry recognized as identical to those he used to commute in and out of the Ministry every day via the Floo network.

"There is no need," the centaur addressed them, inclining her head toward Harry as he reached for his wand. Her voice was softer than they had expected, less forceful, less urgent. She sheathed her sword as she took a step toward them. "I see you," she told them. Centaurs… do they always speak in code?

"You see us?" Harry asked, incredulous.

"Not as you see me," the centaur clarified. "I see you. You do not belong." Harry gasped and Ginny's mouth fell open. The centaur knew? "What are your names?" she asked the two of them.

"I'm Harry," he answered her. "Harry P…" Ginny elbowed him. Perhaps it was not the best idea to give away his identity, particularly since he had no indication at all of what any Harry Potter who might live here and now might be up to. His hand was still in his pocket, having gone for his wand, and his fingers landed on the watch he'd been given by Mrs. Weasley for his seventeenth birthday. "Prewett," he finished, giving the name of the original owner of his pocket watch.

"And I'm Ginevra Delacour," Ginny told her, adopting the maiden name of her sister-in-law.

"You have no aura, Harry Prewett," the centaur informed him. "And you have very little," she told Ginny. "You are from time," she added.

"How do you know that?" Harry asked. Not that he was altogether surprised. He knew that centaurs had a different understanding of the world, and it occurred to him that if anyone would be able to tell that they did not belong in this reality, it ought to have been a centaur.

"I have been waiting for someone from time," the centaur answered him. "I am Ilora," she introduced herself. "I am bodyguard and servant to Her Royal Majesty. She is sick from time. I have been watching for those who might give answers to the queen's health. You are they."

"I don't know anything," Harry told her.

"You are from time," she said back to him.

"There was an error," Ginny half asked, half declared. Ilora nodded her head. "We should never have gone back so far," she said to Harry. "How long do you think it took for us to go and get back?"

"I don't know," Harry told her. "I hadn't thought about that. I knew we would return to the same moment we left. I never thought that…" Ilora cut them off.

"You will come with me," she told them. "Her Royal Majesty will wish to question you. She has known I have watched for you. She believes that time is improper."

"The Queen?" Ginny asked. "She knows things aren't right?" Ilora nodded her head.

"I have made her aware," she answered. "You will come with me," the centaur repeated. Harry shrugged and looked at Ginny. If this centaur, and the Witch Queen were both as aware of how wrong the world was, then perhaps they would be willing to help fix it. Ilora pushed the both of them toward the fire, extinguishing it with the same stomp of her hoof that had caused it to light in the first place.

The three of them stepped into the Floo and found themselves immediately swept up in a flash of greenish light. They emerged on the other end in a room that seemed the polar opposite of the one they had left. It wasn't an enormous room, but it was the nicest parlor Harry had ever had the privilege of being inside. The deep sea green silk wall covering was trimmed in exquisite crown moldings and the walls were hung with mirrors and sconces; some glittering with jewels and others richly engraved and filigreed in the most precious of metals. The fireplace from which they had emerged was easily as large as the one they'd come from and its marble columns and mantelpiece seemed to have been carved from the same place as the dome above the Ministry.

Upon the mantle sat a dozen hourglasses, the third with its sand shifting, and the others still. There was a thirteenth hourglass beyond them; spinning end over end, never quite settling enough to allow the sand to begin moving. It was half full on each end, and remained as such, with perhaps a grain or two moving from one side to the other, but scarcely making any progress before the glass was turned again.

"You have noticed the thirteenth hourglass," Ilora commented upon seeing Harry's transfixed gaze fall upon it. "It was set in motion by Herself on the day she began to believe what I had told her of her illness. It will cease its motion and allow for time to be measured as normal again. At that time we hope as well that Her Royal Majesty will increase in health. We fear that she may die were the time not to be repaired."

"We'd like nothing more," Harry told her. It was only the smallest lie. Harry did want very much for the timeline to set itself right. He wanted to go back to the London he recognized. He wanted to go the Weasleys' for dinner. He did not feel the need to share that in the world he knew there was no queen; in ill health or otherwise.

"You will wait here," Ilora told the two of them. "I shall return with Herself. She is not well enough to be receiving her subjects. She will leave with me." Ilora stepped back into the fireplace and was gone from sight.

"So I guess we wait," Ginny said to him, flopping herself onto an overlong rococo sofa. Harry nodded and joined her on the seat, still watching the hourglasses on the mantle.

"We wait."

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I agree with those of you who wrote that Harry and Ginny are not the people we usually want to deal with. I find I normally have very little use for either of them; but they were the right people to send on this adventure. No other characters would do... it just makes the most sense to use them. I think I'm doing ok with the chatacterizations- and I REALLY hope you all like the way the world is different. I'd love to hear your thoughts... and your theories. I've got this one all drawn up, so it'll be fun to hear where folks think it's going.

More soon. We meet Her Royal Majesty in the next scene.

-MQ


	3. Her Royal Majesty

**STILL**

There were only a few tense minutes after Ilora had left Harry and Ginny alone in the parlor before the flames in the fireplace once again flared up. Within the intricate marble frame, the centaur appeared again. She stepped from the fireplace and regarded the two of them, still on the sofa. "You will rise to greet Her Royal Majesty," she instructed them. "You will bow when she enters. You will not look upon her until she has addressed you. You will speak when spoken to."

Harry looked at Ginny and shrugged. It wasn't as though they were likely to be given a choice. He took Ginny's hand and they both stood as the fireplace flared up again. They lowered their heads and waited to be addressed by the Witch Queen. Both of them strained with their eyes alone to get a glimpse of the spectacle they could sense coming into the room.

There were elves carrying a cushioned sedan chair from within the dancing flame, upon which were bells and tassels, all appointed in silver and in silk. They moved the chair into the room, setting it onto the floor, and vanishing the walls of it, so that only a pile of giant cushions appeared to remain. The elves the Disapparated; a series of 'crack's signaling their departure from the room. A voice that was eerily familiar to Harry called to them.

"You may rise," the cold voice of the Witch Queen called to them. Harry and Ginny raised their faces at the same time to look at the woman on the cushions. Harry did a double take as his eyes fell upon her. He knew her at once; although her countenance was woeful and unlike the visage he would have associated with her.

Atop the pile of cushions and furs, wearing ermine and silk robes of white and silver, with the diadem of Ravenclaw upon her head sat Narcissa Malfoy. She peered down at the two of them without the slightest glimmer of recognition reaching her eyes. Harry thought it odd that she didn't know him. "Mrs. Malfoy?" he greeted her, his voice betraying his disbelief at the entire situation. Ilora bristled and stepped into their line of sight.

"You will address Her Royal Majesty appropriately!" she insisted, "You have no right to take such a familiar tone with the sovereign!" It was the first time they had heard harshness in her voice, but Harry and Ginny could tell that she meant business. They might never have guessed a centaur in the service of anyone, but this one had a sword and seemed quite ready to murder them both if they so much as upset her Queen.

"It's alright, Ilora," Narcissa regarded the centaur. Her tone was measured and her voice was soft, and not as cold as Harry remembered. "If, as you say, they are not from time as we know it, then perhaps they did not know to address me thusly. I may forgive this singular impropriety. Besides," she continued, a sad smile crossing her face, "no one has called me that in a very long time; I rather liked it."

"I…" Harry feared seriously that his head might explode. "I do beg your pardon… your Royal Highness," he corrected himself.

"My pardon is granted," she replied, a bit of sadness leaving her smile. Smiling genuinely did not suit her. She looked ill; as ill they might have imagined. Even at the height of the war she hadn't looked this bad to Harry's recollection. She was thinner and paler than he could even have pictured; especially in light of his having seen her just a while ago looking rosy cheeked and visibly pregnant. Her eyes were sunken now, and they lacked the sparkle that Harry had seen at their last meeting. She looked old, and her complexion was sallow and her hands seemed to shake as she held her wand in her lap. "Ilora tells me that the two of you may be the answer to my malady," she informed them. "The healers cannot seem to improve my condition, and it is the opinion of the centaurs that my aura is addled due to an irregularity in the time stream." She pointed her wand at Harry and he felt a twinge of panic as he watched the time turner from around his neck float across the room and land across Narcissa's bony fingers. "And seeing as this," she regarded the tiny silver and gold object, "is an illegal item; I can only suppose that you have come from a timeline somewhat different from our own. Perhaps one in which the Minister hadn't ordered these all destroyed?"

"You're correct," Ginny was the one who answered her. "We went backwards in time," she explained, "and when we tried to return, we wound up here. This is not where…er…when we left."

"Speak to me of the differences," Narcissa implored them watching the light from the candle sconces glinting off of the metal of the time turner. "What is the state of your world?"

"Well, for starters…"Ginny thought for a moment; she wasn't sure what she should mention, but she had started speaking and so she had to say something. "There aren't people on leashes," she finally settled on.

"What do you do in your time then," Narcissa, sounding suddenly intrigued, asked her, "when the child of a muggle appears to be a magic user?" So that was it; the people on chains were muggle borns.

"They go to Hogwarts like every other witch and wizard," Harry told her. She looked down at him and laughed out loud. Laughed!

"Ilora," she said to her centaur, "what have you brought me?" She put her hand over her heart and got her laughter under control before turning back to her visitors. "Do you mean to tell me," she asked Harry, "that in the reality you inhabit; the Dark Lord allows mud blood to have a wand, or to be educated? You must not be serious."

The Dark Lord allows…. This was not good. Harry tried his best not to let his terror become apparent as he tried to digest the idea that he had entered a reality in which Lord Voldemort was not only alive; but in the position to allow or disallow children into Hogwarts.

"You refer to Lord Voldemort?" Harry asked. He didn't want to hear the answer that he was sure she was about to give, but some outside force seemed to have drawn the question from his lips.

"Of course," she replied. "To what other Dark Lord might I refer?" she asked.

"None," Harry answered. "None other. I ask only because…" How to phrase this? "Because in the time we left; Lord Voldemort is dead." Narcissa's jaw dropped at that news.

"And yet, you say the world is better?" she asked incredulously. "A world without the Dark Lord in it… perhaps it's better for muggles." She shook her head. "I've no interest in living in such a place," she told them. "What do I care what the world is like for muggles?" she asked. "Muggles are of no real interest to me. And so, as much as I can assure you that I believe your claim; that you are from a reality unlike our own, I must say that I can only welcome you to the world as we know it. For I shan't pursue the differences you know of. I have no interest in improving the plight of muggles. You are dismissed." She inclined her head toward them and gestured with her wand to a door at the far end of the room. "And to assure that you will abide by my wishes and not attempt to further alter the timeline, I shall hold on to this." She held up the time turner and smiled at them again. "However, because I believe you; I shan't inform the Minister of Justice that you've been caught by my guard with such an artifact. She is rather stringent with law breakers and I, being a benevolent ruler, shall allow you to be spared my sister's wrath."

"Your sister?" Ginny heard the inquiry escape her lips before she had thought twice about it.

"The Grand Duchess Bellatrix Black Lestrange," Ilora clarified for them. "She serves as the Minster of Justice."

"Well, then, we thank you for sparing us that," Ginny answered, tripping over her tongue as she did. Bellatrix was alive? She was liking this reality less and less with every bit of information she learned.

"Yes," Harry added. "We are quite grateful," he added. "Even in our reality, her wrath is legendary."

"So you see," Narcissa smiled at them again, "you come from a reality not so far removed. You'll get along well, given time. That is all." She waved them off with her hand. They took the hint; she'd likely not tolerate their presence for much longer.

Harry and Ginny turned to leave. They were not going to get any further with Her Royal Majesty, and they both needed to think. As they reached the doorway, Ginny had a flash of what might have been brilliance. Something she had overheard spoken by the crowd trying to get to the palace jumped to the front of her mind and she thought it might be worth taking the chance to say one last thing. Ginny turned again to face Narcissa. Striding across the rug, she looked the older woman in the eye and took a deep breath.

"You're not a widow," Ginny announced.

"I beg your pardon?" Narcissa asked slowly and softly, her mouth coming agape and her eyes widening unnaturally. She studied Ginny, who at that moment felt as though she just might faint under such an intense gaze. Ginny wouldn't have guessed that a lady as ill as Narcissa appeared to be could have had such intensity left in her at all.

"In the world we left," Ginny explained, her voice becoming almost strident as the desperation she held to get the time turner back and make the world right again. "You're not a widow. You're not a queen," she added, "but your husband is alive. And you're not sick. Actually, we just saw you… you're..." Ginny paused; perhaps this wasn't the card to play here, but it was all she had left to get her time turner back. She might not be able to do anything with it once she had it, but she was going to do her damndest to get it back. "Pregnant," she finally announced. "We saw you and your husband today at a Quidditch exhibition and you're happy and well and…and pregnant."

Her Royal Majesty sat up straighter on her cushions. Her lower lip had begun to tremble and she turned her nose up at Ginny; in the self same expression that Harry and Ginny had first seen on her face at the World Cup of Quidditch. "Get out," she growled, pointing at the door with her wand. She was shaking all over and Ginny was honestly afraid of being hexed at the moment. "How dare you torment a sick old woman that way?" she exclaimed, raising her voice to a level that Harry might not have thought her capable of in her condition.

"But that's what we're saying," Harry tried to clarify, crossing toward where Ginny was slowly withdrawing from the room. "You're not sick in the world we know. You're well, and your husband is well, and your son was flirting with a red haired girl…"

"Get," Narcissa repeated, her wand now pointed at the two of them, "out!" Harry and Ginny knew better than to cross her any further. They moved quickly toward the door and did not turn their backs to Her Royal Majesty until they were safely in a hallway. They considered themselves lucky to in a hall with no doors other than the one they'd come out of and another at the far end. They walked quietly and with intent until they reached the door. It opened without any effort on their part and deposited them directly onto the street behind the dome of the Palace.

"Right useful, that," Ginny commented, turning back to look at the doorway they'd come through and watching as it vanished from sight.

"Yeah," Harry agreed half heartedly. He had to think of something. He refused to live in under this world order. "Dumbledore!" Harry suddenly said. He was thinking aloud again and he knew it, but he figured Ginny knew him well enough to follow along.

"Dumbledore?" she asked. Harry nodded at her. He took her by the shoulders and looked her in the eye.

"We need help," he stated, as though she might not be already aware. "And the world is so askew at the moment… what if Dumbledore's not dead?" Ginny shook her head and frowned at him

"Harry," she sighed, annoyance apparent in her tone, "Did you hear her say that You-Know-Who is alive and in charge?" she asked. "If Dumbledore's alive, then he's probably in hiding somewhere. And think about that. If Dumbledore wants not to be found, then we won't be able to find him." Harry sighed. She was right.

"Do you think we should try to find Ron and Hermione?" he asked. He had never faced a sticky situation without his two best mates before, and he thought it only natural to try and find whatever incarnations of them lived in this reality. Ginny, however, thought it a preposterous idea; as was evident by the way she rolled her eyes at him.

"Hermione's parents are muggles, remember?" she asked her fiancé. "Even if they're both alive; Ron and Hermione don't know each other." Damn. Harry hadn't thought that far. Of course they didn't know each other. He was at a complete loss for what to do next. "What about Grimmauld place?" Ginny asked. "If Sirius is still alive, he might help us; I mean, I can't see him a devotee of You-Know-Who's."

"And if he's not," Harry added, "then it's likely still my house." Ginny nodded.

"Let's go then" she encouraged, turning in the direction of Grimmauld place. "I don't want to see what this city is like after dark."

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More soon. Whaddaya think? Any surprises? Let me know what you're thinking...PLEASE. :)

-MQ


	4. The Black Book

The walk to number 12 Grimmauld place was not more than a mile, and Harry and Ginny made the trip in record time. Ginny had a very good point in thinking that they shouldn't be out after dark. They still didn't know what the Harry Potter in this reality was up to, but they were sure that he had never interacted with Her Royal Majesty or else she'd have recognized him.

They approached the house and let out a synchronized sigh of relief as the lights in the windows came into full relief. Harry nodded his head and squeezed Ginny's hand as, smiling, he just said, "Sirius." Ginny smiled back at him as the two of them quickened their pace toward the welcoming sight of the Black family home. Harry stood on the top step and rapped on the door. "It's only polite," he explained as he waited for Kreacher to answer.

When the door opened, Harry stepped through it and looked for the familiar face of the house elf who should have been behind the door. There was no sign of Kreacher. There was no sign of anyone. The troll's leg umbrella stand and other sundry appointments were all correct and in place, but the house seemed more inhabitable than it had the last time Harry had been inside of it. "It's too clean," Harry whispered to Ginny. Ginny, who was taking similar stock of their surroundings, nodded in agreement.

"But if he never went to Azkaban," she offered, "then he never stopped living here; there's be no reason for the cobwebs and the doxies to build up." Harry looked back at her and smiled. What a lovely thought. That was a minor silver lining in this horrid reality. If Sirius had been spared the experience of prison, then perhaps the world in this time was not so bad as they had first figured.

There was a creak on the stairs and Harry's smiling and hopeful face turned up to see a familiar yet unexpected face descending toward them. He recognized Walburga Black from her portrait, although the expression on her face was markedly more pleasant than any he had ever seen the portrait make. Her white hair was piled upon her head in a coiffure that she could certainly not have done up without assistance, and her purple robes were tailored to her slender figure perfectly.

"What can I do for you two young people?" she asked as she reached the foot of the stairs. My: but that was strange. Her voice was perfectly friendly. Harry supposed it was good for both of them that she couldn't tell they were a pair of 'blood traitors'.

"Good evening," Harry greeted her, trying to be as charming as he possibly could. "Mrs. Black," he smiled as he spoke her name. "I'm Harry Prewett," he introduced himself by the name he'd made up for the centaur's benefit.

"Kin to Lucretia's grandchildren?" she asked. Harry just nodded. If Mrs. Black wanted to fancy him her distant cousin, he would just have to let that stand for the time being.

"And this is my fiancée," he added, regarding Ginny next to him. "Ginevra Delacour," he used the name she had created for herself as well.

"I wasn't expecting anyone," Mrs. Black said to them, a rather stern expression on her face at the thought of their lack of decorum in arriving unannounced, "but I'm always happy to welcome family." She smiled again and nodded once. She was the kind of a lady who would never allow a breach in propriety on the part of another to affect her ability to be a good hostess.

"Thank you," Ginny answered. "We were just passing through London," she told the elder lady. "We had a little bit of time on our hands and Harry mentioned that he had cousins here. We really should have written…"

"Well," Walburga smiled as she shook her head. "You're here now and that's what matters. Come in." She turned the corner at the bottom of the stairs and led them down the long hallway toward the dining room. "You're just in time for supper," she informed them. "I'll have Kreacher set two extra places. And where are you staying while you're in town?" she asked.

"At the Leaky Cauldron," Harry piped up. It was the best he could do.

"Nonsense!" Mrs. Black insisted. "You'll stay right here," she said to them. "Will you be trying to get an audience while you're here?" she asked, turning on her heel and leading them back toward the stairs. "You've heard, of course, that Cissy is seeing visitors again?" Harry bit his lip. He hadn't thought of that. Walburga Black was the Queen's aunt; she was apt to write her niece to let her know there was a cousin in town… and then what? Harry could only imagine what might happen if Bellatrix were to be brought into the loop. He could only hope that would not be the case, as Mrs. Black led them up the stairs toward the rooms they would be staying in. "I'm sure that she'd love to meet you," Mrs. Black added, as she pushed open a pair of doors on the second level of the house.

"I doubt we'll have the time," Harry offered. "We're only in London for a day."

"Well, then," Mrs. Black answered, "you'll have to come back." She smiled again at both of them. "I'll have Kreacher bring up more towels and fill your pitchers. You get settled in and then come back down. Supper is less than ten minutes away."

"Thank you," Ginny said, walking through the door into the room that had been indicated as hers for the night. Harry went into the room next to Ginny's and proceeded to wash his hands. He waited until he'd heard Mrs. Black's footfalls reach the bottom of the stairs to come out of his room and knock on Ginny's door. "Come in!" she called.

Harry opened the door and slipped inside. Closing the door behind him, he looked at Ginny and shook his head. "So we're having supper with the Blacks," he observed. Ginny shrugged.

"Yeah," she commented, "and then what?"

"Well," Harry considered, "if Sirius isn't here, then we leave tomorrow; saying we're going home… wherever we decide that is. If he is; then we approach him later. I wasn't expecting Mrs. Black," he added by way of apology.

"We have to remember," Ginny added, as much for her own benefit as for Harry's, "that there's no telling when time went askew. The only hint we have is that it likely went wrong during Her Royal Majesty's lifetime; since that centaur seems to think that's what's affecting her health. But she's no spring chicken," Ginny added. "We don't even know when she was born, so there's no real way to guess how many years difference we're talking about here. Who knows who's still alive now that otherwise wouldn't be?"

"Ginny!" Harry exclaimed. Something she just said had hit him on the head like so many tons of bricks. "There is one," he told her.

"One what?" she asked, obviously confused.

"There is a way to know how many years difference," he told her. Harry took her hand and led her to the door, into the hallway, down the stairs, and into a drawing room. The wall they were facing was draped from top to bottom with a tapestry. At the top was a crest, and words embroidered across it_: The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black. Tojours Pur._ "It's the family tree," he told her.

"And we can find…" Ginny got his drift immediately and looked along the lengths of gold thread for the year of Narcissa's birth. "Here!" she exclaimed. Ginny pointed to the tapestry where the name of Narcissa Black was embroidered. "Born in 1955," she said. "Married to Lucius Malfoy 1954- 1999. He's only been dead two years," she added. "So we know that whatever it was it happened some time after 1955." Harry nodded, biting his lip as he saw something on the tapestry that disturbed him greatly. Harry pointed to a place on the tapestry adjacent to where Ginny had been looking at Narcissa's entry. She turned her head to see what her fiancé was pointing at and gasped when her eyes fell upon what he had seen.

"Sirius," she read. "1959-1974. He's dead," she commented. Harry squared his jaw and nodded. "But look," she pointed at the name just next to Sirius on the tapestry. "His brother is still alive. And here," she continued, "he has children." Harry looked at Regulus Black's entry on the tapestry. It was connected by a double line to the name Mary McMillan and beneath them were the names: Lycoris, Belvinia, and Phineas, with birth years of 1984, 1987, and 1991.

"He was killed as a teenager," Harry muttered, staring blankly ahead and paying no attention at all.

"He was never disowned," Ginny inserted by way of offering comfort.

"He didn't run away until he was sixteen," Harry told her. "This says he died at fifteen." Harry was practically beside himself. Sirius was the one person he might have thought to trust with the truth of his circumstances, and right now he had no idea what he should do next.

"Admiring the family tree?" a man's voice called into the room, causing Harry to start.

"Yeah," he answered, turning to face whomever had just entered the room. The man looked like Sirius; a LOT like Sirius. He was taller, though, and seemed to care much more about his appearance than Harry's godfather ever had. "I'd heard of it," Harry told their new arrival. "Been in the family for seven centuries, right?" Sirius had told him that, and he had no clue why such an unimportant fact had stuck in his brain, but it seemed to be serving him now as the gentleman nodded his head in clear approval of Harry's knowledge of the heirloom. "Thought I'd take a quick look, and show my fiancée."

"That's me, there," the man pointed. Regulus Black. "And you're aunt Lucretia's nephew on the Prewett side?"

"I am," Harry answered. "Harry Prewett," he said with a smile, extending his hand to his 'cousin'.

"Regulus Black," the other man introduced himself, shaking Harry's hand. "Good to meet you." He turned to Ginny and extended his hand toward her. "And you are soon to join the family?" he addressed her. Ginny nodded.

"Ginevra Delacour," she said, taking his offered hand and shaking it as well.

"Pleasure to have you both," he said to them. "I believe we're expected in the dining room," he informed them.

"Certainly," Harry agreed, walking past Regulus through the drawing room door and toward the dining room.

Dinner was less formal than Harry might have guessed; being served in the dining room. In all of the time he had stayed in this house they had never used the dining room for dining. The Order had met in this room, but all of their meals had been taken at the long kitchen table. The dining room had a high ceiling, and the table was too high to eat off of comfortably. The food, however, was extremely good.

Harry and Ginny were more than content to sit and listen to Regulus and his parents regale them with tales of who in the family was up to what at the moment. It was an easy enough task; as Harry and Ginny were pleased to keep their mouths full, and the Blacks seemed to have in common their enjoyment of their own voices. There was so much family gossip going on at the table that Harry had to pay special attention to which pieces of news might be relevant and which ones were just gossip. Regulus' wife was dining at the Palace tonight, with their eldest daughter; who was likely to be engaged to the Prince within the year. His only son, on holiday with friends, was thrilled at the prospect of his first year at Hogwarts beginning so soon. Their middle child, the only one present at the table, had just returned from playing Quidditch in Brazil all summer and she seemed to be thrilled that Harry and particularly Ginny were at all interested in the sport.

They talked of Cissy's health, and Draco's potential as a monarch. They declared a moment of silence between each course in memory of His Royal Majesty the Wizard King, who had been murdered while serving his people and 'broke poor Cissy's heart'. Harry had to wonder if this was the kind of thing that happened in every household at dinner time, or if this was merely a family tradition. Orion Black proselytized on pure-blooded supremacy and encouraged Harry and Ginny to have a dozen children at least, and Walburga warned them that the more children they had the more potential there might be for blood treachery. She quietly mentioned her brother's middle daughter as an example of this. Narcissa had married the man who would be King, and Bellatrix and her husband were Cabinet level Ministers, but the third daughter had married a mudblood back when it was still legal and no one had any idea what had happened to them after the war.

Once they'd had their fill of food and conversation, Harry and Ginny excused themselves from the table and headed up to their rooms; making a quiet pact to meet in Harry's room (the larger of the two) as soon as they were sure the household was asleep. They listened in as the elder Blacks went slowly to their rooms down the hall. He heard the lady of the house return with the eldest daughter, both of them chattering endlessly about 'how much better Cissy looked' and 'how relieved Draco seems that she's better'. Harry couldn't help but think that, if the condition he saw her in today qualified as 'looking better', then he would not like to have seen her when she was still looking poorly.

He listened as the children were each sent to bed, and finally as Mr. and Mrs. Regulus Black climbed the several flights of stairs to the master suite. Harry sat on his bed and stared into the firelight as he waited for Ginny. His eyes spotted a scrap of newspaper on a shelf next to the fireplace. Harry immediately dashed over to where the page was. He cold not believe his good luck.

This was not a scrap of paper; it was a stray clipping hanging out of a scrapbook. Harry was negotiating the large black leather volume from the shelf when Ginny ducked through the door and shut it quickly behind her. "I waited 'til I was sure," she explained herself, crossing to sit on the bed as he walked toward her with the oversized leather volume in his hands. "What's that?" She asked. Harry seated himself next to her on the bed, and deposited the scrapbook on the bed between them.

"A brief history of the world," Harry said to her, pulling the book open. "Phineas Nigellus Black to be the new Headmaster at Hogwarts School," Harry read aloud from a headline pasted into the book.

"Not so brief," Ginny commented, turning the page. Phineas Nigellus had been dead for eighty years, and was certainly not relevant to what they were trying to learn. "Find 1955," she instructed. Harry nodded his head and began turning pages three and four at a time.

"Here it is!" Harry said, pointing to an oval-shaped photo of three little girls in white dresses and its accompanying article. "Narcissa Patricia Diana Black," he read aloud. "Born fourteen November to Cygnus and Druella Black of Coventry. Pictured here with two-year-old Andromeda and Four-year-old Bellatrix Black."

"That's all it says," Ginny frowned.

"Nothing spectacular there," Harry commented. "Nothing that makes time seem out of sorts. Although," he added, "I am slightly disturbed to see Bellatrix as a four-year-old with a bow in her hair."

"Yeah, no kidding," Ginny agreed, looking still at the photo. "But we have reason to believe that, whatever it was that happened, it happened during her lifetime. And that centaur seemed to think she was present for it."

"Right," Harry affirmed. He started turning the pages slowly; scanning each one for information pertinent to their quest for information. They saw Sirius' and Regulus' birth announcements on the next page. After that were mentions of Walburga and Orion Black from the society pages; gossip about contributions and appearances at balls, most of them with a rather flattering picture of Mrs. Black included. Bella's debut was next, and then Andromeda's and Narcissa's, each with a full page devoted to the girls' achievements.

"Imagine what this would say now?" Ginny commented, pointing at the headline over the exquisite photo of a coy-looking Bellatrix in a white ball gown and elbow-length gloves. "Mass murderer, loyal Death Eater, Azkaban escapee…" Harry laughed out loud at that and gestured to Andromeda's bored-looking photo on the opposite page.

"And hers should read: muggle lover, runaway and disgrace," he joked. Ginny nodded, laughing out loud herself. She turned a few more pages; past the two pages devoted to Narcissa's coming out and the tiny blurb trumpeting Bellatrix Black's wedding to Rodolphus Lestrange.

"If I didn't know better," Ginny continued, "I'd say that was a wand-end wedding."

"Is that like a shotgun wedding?" Harry asked, unsure as to just what she'd said.

"I don't know," she replied. "Means that the father of the bride has the end of his wand at the groom's temple to see to it the marriage happens."

"Same thing," Harry affirmed. "And yeah- you see the pomp and circumstance these people go to and then Bella gets married on a beach without so much as a formal engagement announcement?" Ginny shrugged.

"I guess she had better things to do than plan a wedding," Ginny allowed.

"Like mass murder," Harry suggested. He shook his head and turned another page, coming next to Narcissa's engagement announcement.

"The dateline here is seventy-four; November the first," Ginny commented. "Nothing seems out of the ordinary yet," she added.

"Yeah," Harry agreed with her. "I remember that the Malfoys' silver anniversary made the paper last year, which means they were married in seventy-five. So far things have matched up."

"That's good right?" Ginny asked. Harry shrugged.

"I have no idea," he answered, turning the next page. The society page for March 21, 1975 was pasted long-ways onto the next pair of pages. Apparently the Black/Malfoy wedding had been the social event of the decade. There were half a dozen photos of the happiest bride and groom either of them might have imagined. In one picture they were waltzing, in another they fed each other cake. There were hundreds of people, and everyone looked amazing; especially the bride.

"Wow," Ginny sighed before she was able to stop herself.

"What?" Harry asked her. Ginny shook her head and forced herself to look away from the clipping.

"Nothing, Harry," she assured him. He set the book aside and took both of her hands.

"Don't lie to me," he chastised.

"Wedding," she admitted. "Theirs was amazing," she gestured to the several photos of the Malfoys' lavish and apparently perfect occasion. "And if things stay as they are, we might never have one."

"Ginny," he said to her, slamming the book shut and taking her face into his hands. "It doesn't matter where we wind up," he assured her, "or when, or if Voldemort is bound to rule the world forever. I am going to marry you," he said. "We'll find a way. I love you."

"Thanks, Harry," a now teary Ginny offered, throwing her arms around his neck for a moment before reaching across him and pulling the scrapbook into her lap. "Look at the next page," she said to him. "It's out of order." The next page in the scrapbook was not only out of order, but it had been torn from the book altogether and then shoved back in. It was the obituary of Sirius Black. Harry took the page and read it slowly.

"This just says he died in a magical accident," Harry told her. "Easter Sunday; fourteen April 1974. Doesn't say what type of accident. Doesn't even say where it happened." Harry held the single page as Ginny continued to flip through the pages of the book. She passed Draco Malfoy's birth announcement, Lucius' appointment as Minister, Lord Voldemort's declaration of Wizarding Britain as a hereditary monarchy and the Malfoys' coronation as the rulers of such. "He was fifteen," Harry exhorted. "Home from school for Easter," he added. "Wouldn't the others have been with him?"

Ginny turned another page. There was coverage of the edict that banned those of muggle parentage from receiving magical education, and a full copy of the declaration that allowed magic families to keep muggle borns as pets. "There was never a second war," Ginny said. "You-Know-Who never lost," she sighed. Ginny found this unbelievable. How strange to know that the past twenty years the world had been in the hands of Lord Voldemort. But how?

"Lupin!" Harry exclaimed. "No matter when the timeline was derailed," he said to her, "Remus could still be alive. Maybe we could find him?"

"He's a werewolf, Harry," Ginny told him. "How do you think the current administration feels about them?" Harry shook his head as Ginny turned another page. "And Harry," she said slowly and in a completely different tone of voice. She handed the scrapbook over to him as she said, "I don't think we'd be able to talk to him." Harry took the offered book and examined the page it was open to.

On the left hand page was the coverage of the funeral of the assassinated Wizard King. It had been as grand a State occasion as the coronation. And on the right hand page was a half-page story with the headline 'Werewolf Lupin to face justice in Royal Assassination.' "Remus killed Malfoy's dad?" the words sounded wrong to Harry as soon as they left his lips

"I don't believe it," Ginny contended. She climbed up the bed to rest her head against the pillows and patted the spot next to her indicating Harry should do the same. "I want to read some of this," she said, taking the scrapbook back from him and flipping backward a few pages.

Harry peeked over her shoulder and tried to keep up as she read the voluminous coverage of Lord Voldemort's takeover of Wizarding Britain. He had seized power in 1982; having finally defeated, as Harry and Ginny had feared, Albus Dumbledore and the Order of the Phoenix. Within the year, Lucius Malfoy had been appointed Minister of Magic. It was 1990 when the Dark Lord had granted the Malfoys dynastic rights of succession.

There was a long piece about the formation of the Royal cabinet; with each newly appointed Minister's blood line being traced back three or more generations. Bellatrix Lestrange as the Minister of Justice was good for a laugh and a shiver. Her husband Rodolphus, his brother Rabastan, Barty Crouch, Jr., Evan Rosier, Davis Travers, and Antonin Dolohov were among the familiar names listed as now serving in the Cabinet.

There was ample coverage of Narcissa's public appearances as the Witch Queen. And her health seemed to be mentioned at least once in each article. It seemed as though the public genuinely adored her; either that or the press was tightly controlled by the state and even the photographs were staged. Either one could have been true from the news coverage.

Ginny had fallen asleep reading, and Harry only guessed he'd done the same as he was suddenly aware of the sun coming in through the bedroom window. "Ginny," he whispered, shaking her lightly. "Ginny, wake up," he insisted. Harry sprang from the bed and quickly replaced the scrapbook on the shelf from whence it came.

"Harry?" Ginny's groggy voice called to him. "What time is it?" she asked. Harry turned back to her and shrugged his shoulders.

"Daytime," he answered as best he could. Ginny stood up as well and quickly flung open the door to the room they had inadvertently shared overnight. "What's that about?" he asked, regarding the door. Ginny listened for the sound of voices in the house. There were people in the drawing room. She gestured for him to come to where she was. He did so at once and she grabbed hold of his hand, pulling him through the door.

The two of them sprung down the stairs in tandem and strode into the drawing room to join whoever might be there. A pretty, light-haired girl who could only have been Lycoris Black smiled up at them from a wing backed chair. "You two are early risers as well?" she asked. Harry just nodded at her. "Well, sit down," she addressed them. "I can have Kreacher bring breakfast for you," she offered. Gesturing to a silver service on the small ottoman before her, she added, "and you may help yourself to coffee."

"Thank you," Harry said to her, helping himself to a cup of the steaming coffee.

"You're welcome," the young lady said back to him. "This came for you," she added, passing a small silver tray in the direction of the settee that Harry and Ginny were settling themselves onto. There was a folded correspondence card upon it, the sealing wax imprinted with a crest that neither of them recognized. "That's the monarchal seal," Lycoris informed them. "It's from the Palace." Harry and Ginny looked at each other. What could this be?

Harry pulled open the wax seal and Ginny looked over his shoulder as he read the few lies of precise script inside of it. "Your presence is requested at the Royal Estate at the earliest possible convenience," he read. "Signed; H R M."

"Oh!" Lycoris seemed more than a little bit stunned. "The Estate," she exhorted, shaking her head. "She must have gone there last night after supper," she posited. "I didn't tell her there were Prewett cousins in town, as I wasn't yet aware of your presence. But She knows everything." Lycoris' voice was full of admiration as she continued. "We have a Floo that lets us get to the Estate; it was put in when we were little so that my sister and the prince and I could come and go to see each other as often as we wished." She smiled at them brightly. She might as well have been Narcissa from her debutante photo; her genteel manners and ladylike demeanor certainly smacked of having been raised as royal. "It's through that door," she pointed to a small oak door in the wall she was facing. "You should go," she encouraged.

"This early?" Ginny asked, stealing a sip from Harry's coffee mug before remembering how much she hated black coffee. Lycoris nodded once.

"Her Royal Majesty, my Aunt Cissy does not sleep," she informed them. "If she sent a card asking for you to come as early as possible; then she will be waiting for you. You do not wish to keep the Witch Queen waiting." Harry nodded and stood from the seat, reaching down for Ginny's hand. She stood as well and the both of them made their way uncomfortably to the door into the room with the Floo connection.

Once they were safely through the door with it closed behind them, Ginny looked at her fiancé, wide-eyed. "What do you think she wants?" Ginny asked. Harry shook his head and shrugged before giving his answer.

"Only one way to find out."

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

This makes something like 14,000 words today. Good day. I hope you're liking and I hope you're anxious for more. I will try to write more tomorrow, but I have a matinee and an evening show on Saturdays and a matinee on Sunday, so it may be Sunday night before there's more. Maybe next time I'll only post 2 chapters at a time and wait a day for more. Who am I kidding??? I've not the patience for that.

I'm jonesing for more reviews. That's what 4 chapters in a day is about. Please give me a fix.

-MQ


	5. In Her Tearoom

Harry and Ginny emerged from the Blacks' Floo in a room that Harry found to be far too familiar. He shuddered as he recognized the rich purple wallpaper, thick pile silk rugs and lavish appointments of the drawing room on the ground floor of Malfoy Manor. It was in the exact trim that he'd found it in at the height of the war and it was more than a little bit eerie to be standing in it now. Ginny could see his instant apprehension and took his hand.

"What is it, Harry?" she asked. Harry took a deep breath and tried to compose himself. There were things about the war that he'd never told her about, at least not in any vivid detail. And it occurred to him in this moment that it might not be the best time to tell her that this was the room where Hermione had been tortured, or the fact that Dobby was stabbed to death three feet from where they were standing.

"I hate this room," was the comment he settled on.

"You've been here?" Ginny asked. Harry frowned at her and nodded his head, leading her by the hand into the entrance hall adjacent to the cursed drawing room. "Oh," Ginny nodded as the realization that this must have been a part of the vague story she'd heard about a night when her fiancé, brother, and sister-in-law had narrowly escaped from Malfoy Manor.

Harry led them through the door and into the entrance hall. Ginny was completely amazed by the grandeur around her. There were portraits hung from floor to the moldings of the double-high ceiling. The polished floor was strewn with the richest and most intricately woven carpets she could have imagined, and the carving on the banister of the grand staircase might have taken an artisan a lifetime even with a wand. There were antique tables and vases with fresh flowers; the aromas of which were bright and pleasant and the morning sunlight came sparkling through the south-facing leaded and stained glass windows above and around the massive front door.

"Where do you think she is?" Ginny asked, carefully eyeing the filigree patterns on a vase at the foot of the stairs. Harry shook his head; he had no bloody idea. There was a 'crack' and Harry started as though he had just seen a ghost.

He had just seen a ghost; or rather was seeing one. Dobby, the house elf Harry had buried with his own hands just after the last time he'd left this house, was bounding toward the two of them with a bow tie around his neck and smile on his face. "Dobby?" Harry couldn't believe his eyes as he addressed the elf.

"Sir knows Dobby's name?" the elf stopped in his tracks as his disbelieving voice sounded. Ginny shook her head and whispered to Harry.

"He doesn't know you," she observed. Harry blinked his eyes as the little elf continued.

"Dobby is honored that a guest of Herself would learn the name of a house elf."

"You're wearing a bow tie," Ginny said to him. Didn't clothing free an elf? "I thought that clothing…"

"Dobby is a free elf," he proclaimed proudly. What? "Her Royal Majesty freed me when Master was killed, now I serve Herself by choice. Dobby is the most loyal and the most rewarded house elf in all England." Harry felt his brow furrow. Dobby was free at his mistress' hand, and yet he served her still. This was all too perplexing. "I am to take you to Her Royal Majesty at once," he informed them. "Follow me."

Harry and Ginny followed Dobby as he bounded up the grand staircase and onto the mezzanine. As the group turned a corner at the landing, Dobby addressed them again. "Her Royal Majesty will be seeing you in her private chambers," he informed them. "You are most privileged to be invited onto the third floor. Her Royal Majesty only greets the closest friends of the Crown under such circumstances." Harry looked to Ginny and shrugged. Private chambers… all the better to murder them in without being found out.

Not that she could not likely have killed them on any street at midday with abject impunity. She was, after all, the queen; and therefore the law. If she wished them deceased and out of her hair then she could have them dispatched using little more than her own passing whim. And she'd not have had to explain herself to anyone. She'd not likely have gone to the trouble of summoning them to her if she wished them killed; Narcissa Malfoy did not strike anyone as the type who fancied getting her hands dirty.

Harry tried to take whatever comfort he could in that thought as they reached the top of a small and curving stone staircase and were led by Dobby through a door just across the hall and to the left. The room they had entered was as lavish as the others they could relate to the Malfoys, but this one seemed homier… less pretentious somehow. The walls were a simple hunter green and the floor was of polished wood covered over with one somewhat plain albeit giant rug. There was a sofa near the fireplace, and facing that a pair of low slung chairs. The wall to the right was lined with shelves and the fire was burning low beneath the simply carved marble mantelpiece. Before one of the large windows facing the garden was a plush velvet settee, the first piece of furniture in any of the royal locales that had looked even the least bit comfortable to Harry.

Her Royal Majesty was perched upon the edge of the settee, looking through the rain-streaked glass at the garden below. She did not turn to acknowledge their presence. "Leave us, Dobby," she called as the three of them came fully into the room. The little elf closed the door behind them and then with a 'crack' was gone from sight. "Please, come in," she implored, still not turning to face them.

Harry and Ginny obliged her, stepping further into the room. "You may help yourself to tea," Narcissa offered. The two of them looked down at the small teapot and miniature cups on a silver tray upon an ottoman near the sofa. "It was a gift from the Warlock Rana of India… or whatever he's calling himself these days. His English isn't so good," she added, finally turning to face her visitors. "But he does like to give gifts."

She looked awful. If it was possible; she looked worse than yesterday. Her eyes were swollen and her cheeks appeared further sunken than they had been before. She stood slowly and took a moment to steady herself on her feet. The heavy folds of her satin robes hung from her bony shoulders and trailed the floor in such a way that it appeared she was melting. She took a tentative step and it seemed to Harry and to Ginny that she was having a hard time staying standing.

"I made use of your little trinket last night," Narcissa informed her guests with another shaky step in their direction. She held out a trembling hand, the silvery time turner glinting upon her palm. "What good is there in being the sovereign if you cannot occasionally thwart your own laws?" Was she trying to make a joke? She was smiling… and as before it did not suit her.

"Where did you go?" Ginny asked in a hasty moment of curiosity. Narcissa gasped as though she were trying to suppress a sob.

"My wedding," she answered softly. Narcissa took a few more steps toward them and settled herself in to an armchair adjacent to the ottoman and tea service. "I sat behind the orchestra and heard my husband speak his vows to me," she shared. "My brother-in-law joked with him at the altar and said that it was his last chance to change his mind." Narcissa sniffled and smiled brighter. "Lucius answered him that his mind had been made up for years and that this was the best decision he had ever made." She shook her head as though the motion would clear her head of the thoughts that seemed to be swirling there. "Please sit," she implored of them.

"Thank You," Ginny offered as the both of them took a seat on the sofa.

"You say," Narcissa sighed, looking up at the both of them, "that in the world as you know it…" she took a deep but shaky breath and cast her eyes back down at the floor. "My husband is alive?" she asked. Narcissa bit her lip and sniffled before she continued. "We are not the royal family," she added, "and therefore my son will not be king?" Ginny nodded her head and regarded Her Royal Majesty intently.

"Yes," Ginny answered. "You are well and happy; as is your husband and son. But you're not the royal family," she explained. "There is no royal family. The Ministry is still the seat of government." Narcissa nodded and squared her shoulders. She regarded them stiffly. Her head was high and her face serene; for one moment she looked more regal than sickly.

"I wish to help you," she declared. She took in another deep and shaky breath. Ginny gasped, and Harry leaned forward in his seat. They were not sure they could believe what they were hearing.

"Thank you," Harry sighed; his face screwing itself into what he was sure was an imbecilic smile. Narcissa nodded in response.

"The day that my Lucius died," she said to them, "I swore then that I would give all of this up to have him back. But that's not why I do this."

"You're convinced then," Harry asked her, "you're convinced that we're right; that something went wrong… that this isn't right?" Narcissa shrugged her shoulders and shook her head.

"I'm not convinced of anything," she admitted. "But I fear for my son." She reached over to the tray and poured herself a cup of tea from the small silver pot. "Do you know how I became a widow?" she asked, bringing the steaming cup to her lips.

"Werewolf attack, wasn't it?" Harry asked, giving in to the lovely aroma from her cup and reaching to pour himself and his fiancée some tea as well. He remembered the clippings in the Black scrapbook about how the Wizard King had been accosted by werewolves while on holiday in the country.

"He was murdered," Narcissa clarified. "Yes, it was by werewolves," she allowed, "but I am more than certain that it was no accident; no…coincidence. He was killed for his stance against werewolves. One of them frightened Draco as a baby and there was no surer way to incite my husband's ire." She took another sip from her glass and continued. "Lucius was a fair minded man," she told them. Harry and Ginny both had to stifle their initial reaction to that. Fair minded was certainly not any way either of them might have described Lucius Malfoy. "My son is not so just. I fear that he will not be a good king. He is to be engaged to my cousin's daughter very soon; and his coronation will coincide with his marriage. His death will likely follow within a year." She swallowed hard as she shuddered at the thought. "If you can assure me that the life you know includes my son as a safe and happy man with no imminent threat upon his life, then I will do what I can to help you."

Harry nodded. This was the Narcissa he was familiar with. She had stood up to Voldemort for much the same reason. She was selfish; but more than once her singular interest in her own family had done him good. "Yes," he answered her, "that we can promise."

"Then don't tell me any more," she implored them. "If whatever we manage doesn't change anything; I don't want to know. I couldn't bear it. I'm sure there are things both good and bad that would break my heart if I knew."

"Alright," Harry agreed. He could understand. How could he tell her that the Regulus Black who had lived in his timeline hadn't survived to have children? And how could he tell her that her sister had been killed alongside her Dark Lord in the battle of Hogwarts? No; he figured they had let too much slip already in trying to enlist her help in the first place and he was glad that she wished to know nothing further.

"Thank you,' she said to him. "Then I will do what I can for you."

"Your centaur," Ginny began, holding her teacup beneath her chin to inhale the aromatic steam from the swirling brown liquid. "She said that you were sick from time."

"Ilora has said to me that I am ill because I was in the direct wake of whatever it was that set the timeline askew," she explained. "Most others I have spoken to have attributed my ill health to my proximity to a potions accident when I was eighteen."

"A potions accident?" Ginny asked, finally taking a sip from her cup. Narcissa nodded, also sipping her tea.

"An explosion," she told them. "I have no idea what they were doing." Her face looked sad again, almost on the verge of tears. "My cousin Sirius and two of his friends were killed. They were in the cellar of my parents' house. I was on the stairs when it happened. It was Easter Sunday; I was almost a week out of school after that. To this day it hasn't been determined just what they were working on, and therefore just what it was that I was exposed to. No combination of antidotes has seemed to make me much better for very long."

"Sirius," Harry sighed. He looked at Ginny as though a light bulb had just turned itself on in his head. "And two of his friends…"

"Which of his friends?" Ginny asked, getting Harry's drift right away. There was a reason Voldemort had never been defeated. There was a reason that no one had recognized him. The Boy Who Lived had never lived at all. If either of them had to make a wager at that moment they'd have put even money that James Potter had been in that cellar.

"I don't remember their names," Narcissa told them. "It was only a few months before my NEWT's. I must admit that I wasn't paying much attention to anything; particularly not to a bunch of third years over for Easter dinner."

"Do you remember what they looked like?" Harry asked her, sounding almost frantic as he asked. "Did one of them look like me?" Harry was sure that this was it. If his father had been with Sirius and died in that cellar then that would certainly be it.

"Yes," Narcissa answered him, her face clearly showing her depth of thought. "Come to think about it," she affirmed. "Yes. You do resemble one of them. Why?"

"You said not to tell you anything more," Harry reminded her. This was one of those moments he thought that the most prudent course of action. That was a very long story that she mightn't enjoy hearing.

"Of course," she allowed. She sighed again, likely with the knowledge that he'd have told her anyway were the news to have been pleasant.

"What about the other one?" Ginny asked. "Do you remember him?" Narcissa shrugged.

"He was older, that I recall," she told them. "A Hufflepuff; said he was sixth year. I remember thinking that I didn't recognize him, but I hadn't ever paid much attention to Hufflepuffs." Goodness, she was a snob. But that was important. James had been with Sirius that holiday; but not Remus or Wormtail. And in addition there was somebody older that Harry had never heard mention of from anyone before. He was beginning to put things together.

"And all three of them were killed?" Harry asked. Narcissa nodded again.

"Obliterated, actually," she answered. "They found…" she grimaced. "They never found much of any of them." She looked sour, but she was visibly trying to keep her chin held high. Harry was shaking his head. "What is it?" she asked him.

"In our timeline that is neither how nor when Sirius Black died," Ginny offered. "We think…" she turned to Harry for confirmation, but she was sure she was on the right track. "We think that accident may be where the timeline went astray."

"Can you be sure?" Narcissa asked them.

"Lupin," Harry mumbled. He looked to Ginny, who he was sure knew what he was thinking.

The marauders were the marauders and if something affected two of them, then the others should know at least something about it. Harry knew that he'd seen Wormtail on the street, and he would likely be easier to get to than Lupin. But the fact of the matter was that, even though the Peter Pettigrew in this timeline had never betrayed his parents; Harry would still rather speak with Remus about it if at all possible.

"We need to get in to see Remus Lupin," she told the queen.

"Remus Lupin," a disturbed looking Narcissa repeated. She let her breath out slowly and set her teacup.

"I know that he's in Azkaban for the murder of your husband," Ginny offered, "but…"

"He didn't do it," Narcissa sighed. Harry had to carefully keep himself from dropping his teacup in his lap.

"I beg your pardon?" Harry asked her. He couldn't have heard that correctly.

"He didn't do it," Narcissa repeated, casting her eyes at the floor again. "It wasn't him. I know it wasn't."

"You know…" Ginny was utterly confused.

"I knew him," Narcissa imparted. "Not well… but I knew him at school. He was close to my cousin. Remus Lupin was never one to be happy as a werewolf. If he'd had a choice, he would have lived his life as a wizard and locked himself in a cupboard for three nights every month. My husband was murdered for political reason. Remus Lupin was never into politics. And he never ran with a pack. It was a pack that attacked the royal party."

"Then why is he…?" Harry was aware at that moment that were he not so befuddled, he would likely be quite angry.

"In Azkaban?" Narcissa finished his question for him. Harry and Ginny both nodded their heads. "It was politically expedient," she allowed. "He was an enemy of the State as far as some people were concerned; by virtue of his membership in the Order of the Phoenix. Do you know what that is?" Harry and Ginny nodded again. "They had him prosecuted and sentenced before my Lucius was in the ground," she explained. "I wasn't even aware of it."

"But he wasn't put to death?" Ginny asked, her confusion quite clear in her voice. She saw tears come into Narcissa's eyes.

"My sister has had too much influence," she sighed, reclaiming her cup of tea. She gripped the ceramic vessel as though it were life itself as she continued. "I would have thought him to be put to death," she answered. "But my sister and my son thought otherwise. They've locked him up for the remainder of his natural life. And on certain occasions either of them might be found in Azkaban torturing him. I've thought a half dozen times of issuing a death warrant; I have the power to do that. But I can't bring myself to do it, even to end his misery I just can't make myself end his life. I so rarely sign death warrants anymore… there are so few executions. There used to be, but not in the last five years or so- and hardly at all since Lucius…" She trailed off. Ginny was getting teary as well. "Well, anyway," Narcissa began again, taking a very deep breath. "I know that he's innocent and if you two would like to see him I can and will arrange for it."

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Sorry about that two day lag in posts. It happens on the weekends when I have shows. But more will come tonight if all goes well and either way more will be here tomorrow. Reviews make me go faster...

-MQ


	6. Cold and Resolve

Azkaban was not what Harry or Ginny had expected. It was, however, as bad as they ever could have imagined. Its imposing structure and isolated location was enough to keep any sane person from entering on purpose. As it was, Harry and Ginny held each others' hands very tightly as they approached, dreading what may lay inside this loathsome fortress.

Narcissa had kept to her word to help them. She had sent for them a change of clothes and a royal transport to bring them to the North Sea. A coach met them at the gate to Malfoy Manor and drove them to the coast where they were met by the most exquisite yacht that either of them had ever so much as heard of. They'd tried to enjoy their time on the water; tried to use the time alone on the vessel to take their minds off of where they were headed and why. They had managed a little enjoyment out of exploring the lower decks of the opulent yacht until Harry began to feel seasick.

The ship weighed anchor in the North Sea, and Harry and Ginny caught their first glimpse of the stone monolith rising out of the waves. It was a frightening pace even from a distance. A smaller boat was launched off of the stern of the yacht and Harry and Ginny had no easy time climbing into it. Without need of pilot or oar, the little dinghy choppily traversed the maddening seas until reaching an opening in the concrete fortress that would not have been seen from more than a few feet.

As the boat started through the opening; Harry and Ginny shut their eyes, fearing genuinely that their tiny conveyance would be smashed to pieces by the jagged rocks and the fierce seas. To both of their astonishment, the little boat passed safely through the opening and suddenly into a calm pool surrounded by stone stairs. The water in here rose and fell only slightly; a fact that astonished Harry as he realized that the passage they'd come through was connected by a grate to the churning maelstrom outside.

The seas seemed to calm suddenly and their little boat felt as though it had just landed itself on solid ground. The water beneath them rose just then, bringing the boat higher and higher along the stone stairs until they came to a gentle and gradual stop. A pair of soggy planks extended from a door to the port side of the little boat and Harry held his hand out to Ginny, offering to help her out of the boat. Ginny took his proffered hand as she stepped from the creaking vessel.

Harry followed quickly behind her and the two of them made their way across the slick wooden walkway. In their path stood a hulking and corroded metal door, which swung open as they approached. With a straining and a creaking sound that made it seem as though it had been shut for centuries, the door swung open, allowing Harry and Ginny to pass through it.

A smell hit them as soon as they were through the door; a stench unlike anything either of them had ever experienced or even imagined. Ginny had to openly stifle nausea and Harry almost turned on his heel and ran. Salt and sea air was replaced by the smells of fetid humanity, of mildew and decay. An elf appeared before them; possibly the oldest and the dirtiest elf that either Harry or Ginny had ever clapped eyes on. It glowered at the two of them.

"You are here at the pleasure and the insistence of Her Royal Highness," the little cretin grunted. "You will come with me." Harry nodded and moved to follow where the elf had begun skulking to. Ginny had her sleeve in front of her face to try and filter the stench as she followed suit and Harry was trying his level best not to breathe at all.

They followed the elf down a series of dark and low corridors, careful to avoid the puddles of stagnate water or sundry rodents in their path and equally vigilant to avoid being scraped by bits of rusted metal or calcified stalactites that dotted the walls and the ceiling. Harry and Ginny had to let go hands to concentrate on keeping their balance on the wear worn and uneven stones of the floor.

Their path was like a maze; a multi-level labyrinth that snaked and swung, turned, ascended, and descended in a pattern that seemed to make no sense at all to Harry or to Ginny. The whole place smelled vile and there were sounds coming from everywhere and nowhere all at once that met the visitors' ears like the sound of fingernails against a chalkboard. There were screams and shrieks and moans and sobs ringing through the concrete the stone and the steel.

The noises and their echoes sent chills up and down Harry's spine. He had to stop himself from thinking about how many of those he cared about might be here now. The Order of the Phoenix had existed; had fought and had lost. How many of his nearest and dearest were at this moment rotting in this cursed place? He had to shut these wonders out of his mind and remind himself of the task at hand. They had come to this place to fix things; and that included the lot of any Order members who might be stuck in here at the moment.

"Was it always like this, Harry?" Ginny asked him as they came around another hairpin turn and tried not to slip on the suddenly steep downward slope.

"Was what always like this?" he asked, navigating the moss-slick floor as best he could.

"Azkaban?" she said back, coughing lightly as the must and the dank grew thicker the further into the building they went. "Is it this way when we left?" Harry was slightly taken aback by her questioning. He had never been to Azkaban. Sirius had spent fourteen years there, and Hagrid had been stuck in the place for several months during his second year. But he had never asked either of them what it was like. And as an administrator in the Auror office, he had certainly sent people here; some of them for life, but he had never been inside himself. He had never seen a sketch or a photograph.

"I…" Harry wasn't sure what to say to her. She seemed to presume him something of an expert on the place; which he had to admit to himself should have been a safe assumption. As he continued to follow the dank and slimy path he began to feel a little ashamed of himself. "I don't think so," he finally declared. It was as true a statement as he could make. He didn't think that his office and those he knew in the Auror office and the Department of Magical Law Enforcement would allow anyplace under their jurisdiction to become so desperate and fall into such disrepair. He let himself wonder for a minute if any of his coworkers had ever bothered to concern themselves with conditions inside of the prison. He had to table the thought process, however, as the filthy little elf pointed to a door at the end of the hallway.

"Call for me when you are finished with him," it instructed them.

"But we don't know…" Ginny tried to address their guide, but he was gone with a 'crack' before she could finish her sentence. "Your name," she finished, now addressing thin air. She shrugged. Harry responded in kind before they both turned their heads to the door the elf had indicated.

Harry withdrew his wand from his coat pocket. He was suddenly aware of how thankful they should be for the warm clothing Her Royal Majesty had provided them. It was cold in here; very very cold. Harry had nearly balked at the idea of jumpers and coats in August, but he felt the chill in the air as he pulled his coat aside to fetch his wand. He pointed his wand at the rusted metal of the door and after a moment's hesitation it obediently gave way and opened.

The room that was revealed behind it was spare; stone walls and a stone floor with a smattering of straw strewn across the floor. There was a small, primitive looking table in the center of the room with a dimly burning lamp upon it. At the table were three chairs; two elegant and upholstered ones that looked obscenely out of place in this filthy room, and a third made of splintering wood upon which sat a chained and bruised Remus Lupin.

He looked dreadful. His head was hanging to his chest and he was shivering clearly, although Harry was certainly aware of why. His thin cotton prison stripes could not possibly have begun to keep him warm enough in here. Harry quickly waved his wand to cast a warming charm on him. Lupin looked up as he stopped shivering and his eyes caught Harry's.

"James?" Lupin asked. Of course that would be the first thing he thought. How long had it been since he'd seen his friends; any friendly face at all? Ginny grabbed Harry's hand and she could feel his whole body tense as he gasped.

"No," Harry answered, stepping into the room and pointing his wand at the two cushy chairs facing the table. The two chairs suddenly matched the one that Remus was sitting in and Harry led his fiancée over to sit in them. "I'm not James," he assured the other man. "But I'm a relative," he added, hoping that he hadn't accidentally burned some bridge with that revelation. It was strange to be sitting across from him. Harry had forgotten how kind his eyes had been, but remembered in an instant as their eyes made contact across the splintering table.

"James is dead," Lupin reminded himself, half-smiling at Harry and Ginny. So far Harry's theory seemed to be panning out. James Potter was dead. If he had been killed with Sirius Black on Easter of 1974, as Harry and Ginny suspected, then they would know for certain when the timeline was set off course and therefore when they needed to go to put it back right.

"Right," Harry allowed. He wanted to tell Remus everything in that moment; well, almost everything. He mostly wanted to tell his former teacher that he came from a time when Voldemort had been defeated. But Harry knew he wasn't going to tell; there might be questions he wouldn't be able to bring himself to answer. And he knew he'd not be able to impart the piece of their history in which Remus had fallen in love, gotten married and lived to see the birth of a son only to be killed in battle weeks later.

"We've come to speak to you about James," Ginny said to Remus.

"I thought you'd come to kill me," he replied, his face suddenly sadder than he had looked since they'd arrived.

"No," Harry assured him. "We're not going to hurt you."

"I said I thought you were here to kill me," Remus clarified. "I thought perhaps Cissy Black had finally gotten up the gumption to do away with me once and for all; or had developed the backbone to let me be put out of my misery."

"We're not going to kill you," Ginny reiterated. "And we don't care what you say about Narcissa Malfoy," she added. Remus sat up straight. He obviously knew that they weren't there on Her Majesty's Business; at least not any business that he could imagine.

"We need to ask about James," Harry said to him. "And about Sirius." Lupin's eyes began to tear suddenly as he thought of his old friends.

"How long have they been dead?" Remus asked them. "What year is it?"

"It's August 2001," Ginny told him.

"Twenty seven years," Remus answered himself.

"They died together?" Harry half-asked, half-surmised. Remus nodded.

"Should have been all five of us," Lupin sighed, wiping his eyes on his filthy shirtsleeve.

"All five?" Ginny asked him. She wasn't as clear on the history of the marauders as Harry might have been, but she remembered clearly that there had only been four. She knew that Harry already had questions about this sixth year Hufflepuff that had supposedly been along, and she wondered now if this boy could be the lynchpin that blew the timeline off course.

"Wormtail and I should have been there with Sirius, James, and Charlie," Remus answered her. "But I was afraid to go," he explained. The weekend before Easter was a full moon and I was afraid of something happening to make me stuck on the train when it started. I stayed at school that Easter break. And Wormtail had detention with Professor Slughorn. We always did everything together, the five of us, and the first time we spent a holiday apart three of us wound up dead."

"Charlie was older than the four of you, right?" Ginny asked. He nodded.

"We weren't really friendly with him until that year, come to think of it," Remus remembered. "But from the moment we met him it was like we had known him forever."

"Do you remember him from before then?" Harry asked. If Charlie was an invader from the future, then he likely would not have had the patience to be around for the marauders' first two years of school just biding his time in the background. Remus seemed to be concentrating hard for a few moments before answering.

"I can't say that I do," Remus answered. "Why are you asking me this?" he quizzed. It was clearly difficult for him to talk about. Harry decided in that moment that he might as well let some of it slip. Maybe it would give this man a little hope; the one thing aside from a warming charm that he could offer.

"We think that something went wrong that Easter," Harry told him.

"A potions experiment went wrong," Remus answered. "The Blacks' cellar exploded."

"No," Harry countered. "We think that wasn't supposed to happen."

"Of course it wasn't supposed to happen," Remus agreed, "it was an accident."

"No, no," Ginny inserted. "We think that someone tampered with the timeline," she explained. "Sirius and James weren't supposed to die."

"What are you saying?" a confused looking Remus asked them.

"We're saying that the timeline has been tampered with," Harry answered him. "And without getting too specific," he continued, "we're sure that Sirius and James should not have died that day."

"And Charlie?" Remus asked.

"We don't know bollocks about Charlie," Ginny answered him.

"My guess is that he's responsible," Harry shared. Remus was looking at the floor and shaking his head.

"So life isn't supposed to be like this?" he whispered.

"No," Harry shared. "No, it's not. Life should be far different."

"How do you propose to fix it?" Remus asked them. "There is no time travel. The time turners have all been destroyed."

"No they've not," Ginny countered. "Her Royal Majesty has ours," she told him. "We left the world one way to visit the past and we returned to this state of things. She's taken our time turner," she explained, "but she's agreed to help us. That's how we got in to see you."

"I wish I could tell you more," Remus sighed. "I can only wish you luck."

"Thank you," Harry said to him. "If all goes well, you'll never be in this place."

"Go then," Remus encouraged them. "Cissy will not likely grant me death as reprieve any time soon. I can only pray that you are successful and I am spared this fate."

"We'll try," Harry agreed, tugging on Ginny's arm as he rose from his chair. It was finally clear when they were going and what they had to do. Whoever this Charlie was… he was a murdered; and he had to be stopped.

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More tomorrow. I wasn't the most thrilled by this chapter... but tomorrow's should be great (I hope). They're headed back to the palace to get their time turner back and save Narcissa from sickness and widowhood...er... I mean the world from Voldemort. Yeah- that's it.

And since I've been asked... I'm playing Esther in "Meet Me in St. Louis" in a really neat outdoor space. it's w w w DOT foresttheatre DOT org if you want to see :)

-MQ


	7. Potion Maker's Pet

The trip back from Azkaban seemed to go slower than the voyage to get there had gone. It was late by the time the ship arrived to fetch them, and they were shown by the steward to a lovely cabin beneath the bow. Unfortunately, no good night's sleep was to be found in such rough seas, and Harry spent most of the night upon the poop deck; trying his best not to heave into the rainstorm that kept him ill for the duration of the trip. Ginny, for her part, hovered in the doorway leading from the lower decks to where Harry was leaning over the aft railing until Harry insisted that she go below and try to get some sleep.

The sun was peeking over the horizon as the yacht tied up at Southampton and Harry had never been so pleased to see dry land in all his days. He'd always fancied himself the kind of person who might enjoy yachting; not that he'd ever been aboard a seagoing vessel before. He had just imagined the peace and quiet of a tranquil sea to be something that suited his nature. However, the reality of ocean faring was not something that Harry Potter could see himself volunteering for again in the foreseeable future.

A coach was there to meet them in port, and Harry was loathe to board it. Although an overland journey would certainly be less nauseating to him than any more time spent at sea, nothing could quite compare to his desire to sit still. Luckily for Harry, the horses were swift and the terrain was fair, making for a much smoother ride than he'd anticipated. Still he had no small thrill upon arriving at the entrance of Malfoy Manor.

An elf he did not recognize greeted the coach and helped them down onto ground so firm that Harry had to resist the urge to fall and kiss it. He was dragging his feet as they mounted the stone steps and passed through the massive oak door leading to the entrance hall of the mansion. Ginny, on the other hand seemed to be completely fresh. She had slept well with the rocking of the waves, and was more anxious than she might have admitted to share what they had learned with Her Royal Majesty.

As they entered the house, there was an immediate and all consuming sense that something was not at all right. Ilora, the centaur who had brought them to Her Royal Majesty's attention, was pacing before the stairs. The flowers in the vases were all missing, and dark swags of crepe were being hung by house elves from the mezzanine and down the banister.

"What's happened?" Harry asked of no one in particular. It was the centaur who answered him.

"I'm afraid that Her Royal Majesty has taken a turn for the worse," Ilora told them. "She will not be able to see you this morning."

"But we must see her," Ginny insisted. They had not come all of this way just for Narcissa Malfoy to drop dead and ruin their chances to fix things. Her Royal Majesty had their time turner and they would manage to fix nothing without it.

"We prepare for her departure," Ilora said to them. "It shan't be long now. She will not be seeing you this morning."

"Please," Harry implored. "Please; we have news." The centaur shook her head. "Dobby!" Harry called into the air. The little elf appeared obediently before them with a 'crack'. He was weeping into a scrap of lace that could once have been a proper handkerchief. "Dobby," Harry addressed him, thankful the elf had chosen to answer him. "Please tell your mistress that we're here," he implored. "Please." Dobby nodded and Disapparated, another 'crack' signaling his departure.

"You have learned then," Ilora addressed them, seeming not at all annoyed that Harry had gone around her authority. "Of the accident that damaged time."

"We have," Ginny assured her. "We need out time turner, though. If we're to set things right…" The centaur was shaking her head.

"You will need more than that," she informed them. Another elf appeared before them; less weepy than Dobby had been, but sniffling nonetheless. This one was tallish- taller that most house elves that Harry had ever seen, and he seemed to be slouching even as he stood, perhaps aware of his height.

"I am to show you to rooms," the elf told Harry and Ginny. "Her Royal Majesty wishes to see you." Harry looked at Ilora and smiled; he hated feeling so petty over being right about something; but his exhausted and frustrated brain couldn't help it. "The healers have told her to receive no one," the elf added. "She has instructed me to make you comfortable until such time as she can receive visitors."

"She is going to die," Ilora injected.

"Not if we can help it," Harry answered back. He turned and headed up the grand staircase behind the too tall house elf. Ginny followed suit and the two of them were led onto the second floor.

They were shown to quarters; a pair of adjacent rooms with bronze and camel colored silk and velvet appointments. They were shown the main library on the way and told that they were free to explore the volumes within. Harry couldn't help himself; he divested himself of his jumper and trousers and fell almost immediately asleep on the towering feather and down bed in his room. The piles of pillows and layers of soft blankets might have been the most comfortable place that Harry had ever lay his head. Top that with the fact that he was eternally grateful to have found a place to lie down that wasn't moving, and Harry slept remarkably well.

The sun had gone down again when he awoke. He dressed himself quickly and knocked on the door to Ginny's room. Finding her absent, he thought to check the library. Ginny didn't particularly enjoy reading, but he figured that any book would be more interesting to her than watching him sleep. He pushed open one of the double doors leading into the library and craned his neck for a sign of anyone.

The room was long and tall, with paneled walls and shelves of books from floor to ceiling. There were several small tables, each made of marble, and each surrounded by chairs in silks and velvets all in coordinating greens and browns. In the center of the room was a cluster of couches in the deepest green leather with copper rivets and framed in mahogany. Ginny was sitting on one of them; her back to the tall windows at the far end of the room and a small book in her lap.

"Harry!" she called to him when she heard the door opening. He came in to the room and closed the heavy door behind him. He crossed quickly to sit next to her on the couch and put his arm around her waist. "Feeling better?" she asked. He answered her with a kiss on her neck. "I'll take that as a yes," Ginny giggled, setting down her book and turning to face him.

"What's that you're reading?" he asked. Ginny frowned and handed the book to him.

"It's a muggle book," she told him. "Who'd have guessed the Malfoys would have such things in their library?" she mused. "It just landed in my lap. I guess that's the magic in this room; I sat here and it brought me a book; a book about what was on my mind. This one's about someone who goes back in time to fix a problem and finds the future all wrong." Harry picked up the book and read the spine: _The Time Machine, by: H.G. Wells_.

"Are you having second thoughts?" Harry asked her, setting the book on the nearest table and turning to face his fiancée. Ginny shook her head and looked back at him.

"No," she answered definitely. "No," she repeated. "I will admit I had momentary ones," she said to him, leaning forward and picking up a bowl of berries from a table that Harry hadn't even noticed. "Seeing Remus alive… meeting Regulus Black's children…there are things that won't exist if we make things right. But I remember that Voldemort's in charge here; and I can't abide that. No matter what may be good here, it's all wrong. I don't think that anything that we might return to could be worse than this is; not really." Harry took the bowl of berries from Ginny's hands and set it to the side. He embraced her then, tightly and surely.

"You just said what I wanted to," he told her. "I love you, Ginny."

"I love you, Harry," she echoed. "And I want to fix this; now." Harry nodded and stood from his seat.

"I agree," he told her, reaching out a hand to help her to standing. Ginny stood beside him and Harry began pulling her toward the door.

"Where are we going?" she asked him.

"To see Her Royal pain, that's where," he answered her. They charged through the door, down the hall, and up the curving stone staircase to the private floor of the Manor. Dobby had led them here on their first visit and Harry was sure that this was where they might find Narcissa. He turned the knob on the door to the parlor where they had shared tea with her and strode into the room ready to demand his time turner.

There was no one in there. Harry's resolve suddenly seemed to deflate as he looked around the empty room. The drapes were drawn and there was no fire in the grate. It was dim; the lights from the sconces seeming eerily orange-colored and casting oddly shaped shadows across the floor. "Damn," Harry whispered.

"Now what?" Ginny asked, half rhetorically. There was a clatter to their left, and the sound of footsteps. Someone had heard them come in.

"Who goes there?" a familiar drawling voice asked as the lights grew brighter. Harry and Ginny turned toward the sound of the voice just in time to see a door swing open and two people pass through it. Harry felt the blood drain from his face as a pang of recognition came across him.

Severus Snape looked just like himself; only better. He was immaculately groomed, his hair combed and clean; his robes tailored and lush. And behind him stood a woman whose auburn hair and green eyes Harry would have known anywhere. She was dressed simply, but well, and the look on her face was the most concerned expression that Harry had ever seen anyone wear. It couldn't be… but it had to be.

Snape had his wand drawn and was advancing on Harry and Ginny's position. "State your business," he ordered; his nostrils flaring as he continued to move toward them.

"Severus, please," the woman, still in the doorway, implored of him. "Let them answer," she begged.

"Lily…" he admonished, never turning his gaze from Harry and Ginny. Harry thought he was going to faint. Lily Evans, his mother had the timeline gone properly, was alive and standing not a dozen feet from him. Ginny turned to look at Harry as soon as she realized who it was in the doorway.

"We've come to see Her Royal Majesty," Ginny managed to answer. "She's expecting us."

"I doubt it," Snape drawled. He stopped his forward momentum, though, and stood still regarding them. "Her Royal Majesty is not well. She is not receiving visitors," he added, "not even those who know how to get into her rooms."

"Are you the time travelers?" Lily asked, moving forward into the room.

"Lily," Snape addressed her again, "remember yourself." Harry felt the bile rising in his gut. Hadn't he read an edict that allowed wizards to keep muggle borns as pets? The thought of his mother as the property of Severus Snape made him feel murderous and nauseated all at once.

"It's alright," Harry said to the others. "We are the time travelers," he explained. "And when we come from things are different. In the world we live in pure bloods, muggle borns and half bloods," he looked Snape squarely in the eye at that remark, "are all equal and the same. It's no offense to us if she speaks." Severus dropped his wand and nodded his head once. Lily closed the distance between them and placed her hands on his arms.

"I know who they are, Severus," she told him, pulling him toward the nearest seat. Snape allowed her to settle him into the chair, his whole bearing seeming to relax as soon as she had touched him. It made Harry a little uncomfortable to see, but he was too amazed by being in the room with Lily to really think altogether clearly.

"Lily?" a soft voice called from through the door they had just passed through.

"Cissy!" Lily let go of Severus and dashed back toward the darkened doorway. Narcissa was leaning on the doorframe, looking questioningly into the room where the group of them were. Lily took hold of Narcissa around her waist, and put the regent's arm about her shoulders. Narcissa allowed herself the help, moving with Lily to the sofa nearest the door. "You oughtn't be out of bed, Cissy," Lily admonished her queen. Narcissa shook her head as she settled herself into her seat.

"I'm alright for a while, Lily," she said. It looked as though she was trying to smile just then, but her sunken cheeks and hollow eyes would not allow it. "If I am going to die," she offered, "I shouldn't wish to do so alone in my bed."

"You're not dying, Cissy," Lily countered. Narcissa did manage to smile at that.

"You've been saying that for two decades, Lily," she reminded the younger woman. "One of these days I shall prove you wrong." Something seemed to hit Lily over the head just then. She turned quickly to Harry and to Ginny and regarded them severely.

"You look like a boy I knew in school," Lily declared. Harry wanted to scream and rip out his hair. His mother recognized his father's looks in him; would she see her own eyes? "But he died," she added. "Are you a relation?"

"Uh…" Harry wasn't sure what to say.

"This is Harry Prewett," Narcissa told her, "and his fiancée, Ginevra Delacour."

"Prewett?" Lily asked. "I knew some Prewetts in school also. Are you kin to them?"

"Yes," Harry replied quickly.

"They're lovely people," Lily said. "And you," she addressed Ginny, "will fit right in with that clan; you look just like Gideon and Fabian's older sister." Ginny had to allow herself a smile; she had always known she looked like her mother, and she enjoyed the fact that someone saw the resemblance without knowing the relation. "But you…" Lily looked at Harry again. "There's something about you that I can't put my finger on…" Narcissa looked back and forth between Harry and Lily and it appeared that she became suddenly aware of just what that might be.

"It could be a great many things, Lily," Narcissa said to her in a clear attempt to get her to drop the subject. "He could be related to any number of people."

"How did you know I was muggle born?" Lily asked them. "You did not presume that. I am not wearing chains, and Severus does not treat me as a pet in private. How did you know that?" Harry gasped. Had he given too much away?

"We…" he began, unsure of what to say next.

"You likely exist in their time as well, Lily," Narcissa said it for him. "Perhaps they know of you. However, I've asked not to be told any more. I do not wish to know what I might be missing or what I could be giving up by rendering aid to these travelers."

"I beg your pardon," Lily said, backing away from Her Royal Majesty and seating herself next to Snape.

"Don't treat me like the queen, Lily," Narcissa sighed. She seemed to have gotten a glimpse of Harry and Ginny and she turned her head slowly to look closely at them. "You're surprised," she addressed to them. "You would never have guessed that I'm so familiar with muggle blood," she surmised. Harry just nodded his head. "Severus has been a friend of our family since his sorting," she explained, "and Lily has been a friend of Severus since years prior to that. When the edicts went out, we saw to it that our Lily was protected. She's a whiz at potions, and so she serves the court as an apprentice to our chief potion maker. Lily is dear to us," she shared.

Harry felt a little pang at that. He wanted his own time back; he did. But there was something awful about the thought of condemning Lily Evans to die again. Ginny had been right, though; the rest of the world will be better off once they have set the timeline straight and removed Voldemort from the world.

"I am surprised," Harry admitted. "But only a little," he added. "You always seemed to me to be rather decent," he told Narcissa. That wasn't giving anything away.

"Tell me, Harry," Narcissa implored, "has your quest borne fruit? Do you have answers?"

"We do," Ginny answered for him. "I don't know that we should tell you…" she added.

"Tell me only if you'll be able to solve it," Narcissa asked her.

"We will," Harry affirmed. "I'm almost sure of it. Our theory was right," he told her. "We know when and we know who… now we've just got to stop it."

"You'll need this back," Narcissa said to them, unfastening the golden chain of the time turner from around her neck. Ginny reached out to her and took back the trinket that Her Royal Majesty had confiscated from them. Her hand was deathly cold; she would likely expire soon. Ginny nodded at Narcissa as she continued to speak. "And when Severus was summoned, I asked him to bring along a few things for you as well." She nodded in Snape's direction and he stood quickly, turning on his heel and walking toward a shelf on the far side of the room. He returned in an instant with a wooden box. He set the box before the group and opened it so that Harry and Ginny could view its contents.

"These are illegal," Snape informed the time travelers. "I do not know to where or to when you are planning to travel," he added, "but these may or may not be legal then and there."

"What are they?" Ginny asked, examining the vials and flasks in the suspicious-smelling box. Snape shook his head and picked up a small glass vessel from within the case.

"Veritaserum," he informed them. "A very potent batch. One or two drops on the tongue of a transgressor and he will gladly share his life story." Harry took the vial from him and nodded his head. The bottle was nearly full. If it would truly only take a drop; then this was more than they might possibly need. Snape reached into the box and withdrew a pair of large bottles, handing one to Harry and the other to Ginny. Harry opened the stopper and sniffed at the slimy liquid in the bottle.

"Polyjuice potion?" Harry asked. Severus nodded. "Narcissa has told me little of your quest; but we have surmised that you may need to employ some degree of stealth whilst you are pursuing it. You must add the essence of the person who you wish to disguise yourself as. Hair will do for an hour per swallow," he told them. "Sweat or tears will do for longer; blood for even longer than that."

"Alright," Harry agreed, tucking the bottle into the inside pocket of his robes. A 'crack' rang out and Dobby appeared in the center of the room; his lacy hanky soaked through with tears.

"Missus," Dobby addressed Narcissa. He moved a few steps closer to her. "His Royal Highness the Prince has arrived."

"Tell him where we are, Dobby," she instructed her elf. "But show our guests to the door first," she regarded Harry and Ginny. "The coach that brought you here from Southampton is at your disposal," she told them. "Good luck to you," she said to them.

"Thank you," Ginny said as she stood and prepared to follow Dobby out. "For all of it. You've been quite pleasant to us," she added. "And I wish you well."

"Thank you," Narcissa said in return. Harry and Ginny turned and followed dobby out the door and down the stairs. They reached the mezzanine and followed the bounding the little elf down the grand staircase and into the entrance hall. Dobby opened the front door and the two of them took one final look at him. Ginny grabbed her fiancé's hand and pulled him down the stone stairs and toward the waiting coach.

"We should go, Harry," she said to him. "We don't want to risk being seen by His Royal Highness." She had a point. It was very likely that Draco had no idea that his mother was helping them repair the timeline. He mightn't be so accommodating as his mother had been.

"You're right," Harry said to her. "I want to get this done," he added, opening the door to the coach and gesturing to Ginny to climb in. She did so, and Harry pulled himself in behind her. He was frowning, and made no move to tell the driver where they might be headed.

"You're thinking about your mum," Ginny suggested. Harry shrugged.

"I don't like the idea that she's Snape's pet," he spat.

"They're good to her," Ginny offered by way of comfort. "She seems happy enough."

"Yeah," Harry sighed, shaking his head. "And I'm about to go back in time and change the world so that she doesn't live to see her twenty second birthday." He shook his head. "This was easier two days ago," he shared.

"I know," she agreed. "I really liked Belvinia Black. I don't love the idea that she'll never be born. But we've got to think of the greater good,"

"Don't say that!" Harry admonished. "Dumbledore said that… or Grindelwald did. It's not about the greater good; that's not what this is."

"Then what is it?" Ginny asked. "Are we just doing this to be selfish? Do we only want this for ourselves? If this is about you and me and our happily ever after, then I need to know that, Harry. I thought this was about You-Know-Who, and fixing time so that he's not ruling the world and ordaining monarchies where they don't belong and subjugating muggles and making those wizards and witches with muggle parents into house pets on chains. I thought that this was about making the deaths of your parents and my brother, and Remus and Tonks and Colin and Mad Eye and all of those other people mean something again. That's what I thought this was about. And I'm willing to do this for those reasons, Harry; but only for those reasons. You didn't read that book, Harry," she told him. "What we're messing with is too big, and too important to do this for selfish reasons. Who knows what could happen if this goes wrong?"

"It's gone wrong already," Harry reminded her. "This world that we're sitting in at the moment is wrong. We cannot forget that. I liked Belvinia Black, too. But I just had a conversation with my mother; except that in this timeline she isn't my mother because my father was murdered in his third year at Hogwarts by someone whose motives we're still unsure of. If I had to guess, the whole plot was to keep me from being born, Ginny. I can't forget that in this timeline I never existed and so my mother never defeated Voldemort. No one ever defeated Voldemort. We can't let that be. This isn't about what's good and what's not. This is about what is correct and what's supposed to be. I think that the world we know IS better, Ginny. But I doubt Regulus Black or his children would agree with that. We can't think about what's good and what's not. We have to remember that we're making it right- not better; and we have to remember the distinction."

"Alright," Ginny agreed with a sigh. She hadn't meant to blow up at him; but she needed to know what he was thinking. He was right, though. There was a distinction between what's 'better' and what's 'correct' that needed to be remembered at all times on this trip. There may be temptations in store to 'improve' upon the history they knew; but they should not be even tempted to do so. "So to Hogsmeade?" she asked. Harry nodded. A drink and a meal and they would be on their way to 1974.

He wasn't altogether sure what they were going to do when they arrived.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Okay... fasten your seatbelts folks. Next stop the 70's. Big hair, sideburns, polyester pants, the sexual revolution, and marauders making mischief. Glad you're all on board. Reviews make me super happy and I write faster when I'm super happy. Keep 'em coming pretty please. THANKS

-MQ


	8. The Headmaster's Assistance

**THEN**

Spending the night in Hogsmeade had been an easy decision. The Three Broomsticks was still the Three Broomsticks and they were pleased to be greeted by a good meal and a warm bed. Harry had been broadsided by the sudden return of his appetite after their seafaring adventure and Ginny had more than once on the journey suggested stopping for supper.

Morning came and they rose with the sun; this seemed to be their pattern in this time scheme, although it never had been before. They bathed and dressed, took breakfast in their room, and set out to the destination they had determined as the best possible location from which to time travel: the Shrieking Shack. They had learned long ago not to fear the decrepit hovel, but knew that it was unlikely many others had come to the same conclusion. They thought that the shack, with its accompanying pathway into Hogwarts, seemed to be the best possible place for time travel.

They had made a plan; neither of them seemed to have been willing to fall asleep without some rudimentary sense of what they'd be doing in the morning. First, they would travel back until they were reasonably certain that they were within a day of Easter Holidays in April of 1974. They would explore Hogsmeade and get hold of a copy of _The Daily Prophet_ to make certain that they had landed in the correct week. They would then make use of the secret passage from the Shrieking Shack to get onto the grounds of the school without being detected. Then, using a Disillusionment charm, they would try their best to get in to the Headmaster's office.

Dumbledore would help them. They were sure of that. As they snuck through the gate and toward the Shrieking Shack that was the one thing they felt they could be certain of. They took a position in the center of the room. Harry was in his shirtsleeves and still carrying Ginny's Harpies travel satchel and Ginny had on her Quidditch trousers and the jumper that Narcissa Malfoy had given her for the journey to Azkaban. "You ready?" Harry asked as he looped the gold chain attached to the time turner around the both of them. Ginny nodded.

"As I'll ever be," she affirmed. Harry began to spin the time turner. Over and over the little trinket turned, and around them the room shifted and shifted and shifted. Day became night and day again in a flickering strobe of time passing backward. Harry finished spinning the turner and waited as the world around them slowed and finally stopped in what he hoped was April of 1974. "That is really unpleasant," Ginny observed, shaking her head and finding a seat on the nearest flat surface; which turned out to be an ottoman so decrepit that it ought not to have been sat upon at all.

"Catch your breath," Harry encouraged her. "But not for too long," he corrected. "We should get on this."

"Right," Ginny affirmed, standing up and squaring her shoulders. "Let's go."

"You're sure?" Harry asked her. Ginny nodded.

"Let's get this done and over with," she encouraged. Harry reached out a hand to help her up off of the teetering ottoman. Harry bolted toward the door. "Wait!" Ginny called after him. "I forgot something." She turned to her travel satchel, propped against the post of the small bed and pulled the flap open. She fumbled around with the contents, stuffing a few sundries into her pockets. She then stashed the satchel well and out of sight before standing and nodding to Harry, signaling that she was ready to go.

They left the Shrieking Shack and walked intently down the way and across the main street into The Three Broomsticks. "Breakfast?" Harry asked. Ginny nodded as they crossed the threshold into the inn. They seated themselves at a table in the corner; largely out of the way of the rest of the clientele. Ginny's forehead crinkled as she leaned across the table to whisper to Harry.

"Is that Madam Rosmerta?" she asked, gesturing as subtly as she could to the woman walking toward them. Harry looked closely at her, and nodded his head. There was no doubting that this was, in fact, Rosmerta herself. My but she looked different. She couldn't have been twenty years old, and she was absolutely gorgeous. Her light brown hair was pulled up at the temples and hung down her back in long waves. Her burgundy and ivory colored robes were snug across her bosom and hips and she was smiling brightly as she approached them.

"A spot of breakfast, then?" she asked them.

"Please," Harry implored.

"And coffee," Ginny requested.

"Certainly," Rosmerta agreed, turning to fetch their fare.

"And the newspaper," Harry remembered. They needed to learn the date, and to make sure that the news was correct. If they had arrived at their intended destination, they still may be in the wrong place and the wrong time to affect the repairs they were after. Harry was anxious to learn whether they had figured right that the timeline was still proper and intact and that they were when they intended to be. Rosmerta nodded and winked at Harry as she made her way back to the kitchen door.

She returned quickly with _The Daily Prophet_, which Harry was relieved to read was dated April the 3rd 1974. "Ten days," Harry said softly to Ginny as their breakfast was being laid out.

"Two days," Ginny corrected. "Easter Vacation starts Friday," she reminded him. "That's day after tomorrow. We need to get to Hogwarts and assess the situation."

"Right," Harry agreed, shoveling his beans into his mouth. "We should go."

"Finish your breakfast," Ginny encouraged him, spreading butter on a slice of toast. "I'm hungry too."

They ate quickly and quietly, passing the paper back and forth to apprise themselves on the news of the day. They were in the right place and the right time, as far as they could assess. There was news about Associate Minister Bagnold and her advocacy for the rights of the pure blooded to keep items in their possession that would otherwise be illegal to own by virtue of their status as family heirlooms. There was even a tiny mention on the back page of a Death Eater sighting in the Shetlands.

They finished breakfast and left enough money on the table to cover it. Neither of them had any real idea what breakfast cost in The Three Broomsticks in 1974, but they figured that leaving an amount that would have covered it in 2001 would be enough to pay the bill and allow for some small gratuity. They thought for a moment to approach Hogwarts by the usual route via the road leading out of Hogsmeade, but had thought better of it when it occurred to them to concern themselves with being seen by as few people as possible on their way up to Hogwarts.

They snuck back up to the Shrieking Shack and through the secret passage to the Whomping Willow. Emerging out of the other side, they were both impressed at the slight size of the tree. Harry had known that the tree had been planted on the grounds of Hogwarts the year that Lupin and the others had come to school, but he hadn't thought the fact through to realizing that it mightn't be full grown in his third year.

The tree was big enough, however, to cause them no little degree of difficulty in getting away from its branches. The tree was smaller for sure, but violent enough and Harry and Ginny needed all of their wits about them in order to avoid being pummeled within an inch of their lives by the accursed branches. Once free of the damnable plant, they spent a moment brushing the dirt off of themselves and Ginny took the care to mend a rather nasty tear in Harry's trouser leg.

Ginny then had the presence of thought to hide them beneath a Disillusionment charm before they made much progress toward the castle. Sneaking in wasn't so difficult, as they were invisible, but it was a rather tedious undertaking to wait until someone approached the Headmaster's office so that they might overhear the password. By mid day they were greatly thankful to madam Rosmerta for such a generous breakfast and by mid afternoon they were already quietly fantasizing about whatever sweets Professor Dumbledore might have in his office.

It was getting on to three o'clock when Professor Slughorn approached the Gargoyle guarding the entrance to the office holding on to a pair of feuding students by their ears. "Caramel Crème!" he called into the air, causing the giant stone Gargoyle to move to allow them passage. Harry recognized one of the boys as the Death Eater Mulciber, only much younger, and the other was no one either of them could place.

Slughorn and his captives were not long in the Headmaster's office and as soon as they were clear of the hallway Harry and Ginny approached the Gargoyle with élan. "Caramel Crème!" Ginny whispered harshly. The Gargoyle cleared their path and they mounted the stairs as they began to spiral upward toward Dumbledore's office and, they hoped, help. The stairs ceased their ascent and Harry and Ginny stood facing the polished oak door that led to the office proper. Harry did not hesitate to tap the brass griffin door knocker against its base. He had thought to just walk in, but he'd reconsidered and waited for an invitation.

"Come, come," called a comforting voice from within the room. Ginny flicked her wand to dispel her Disillusionment charm as Harry turned the handle and opened the door. "Now Horace, I believe that I've told you more than once…" Dumbledore looked up from his copy of _Transfiguration Today_ and noticed immediately that he was not, in fact, speaking to Horace Slughorn. "Can I help you?" a rather confused sounding Dumbledore asked the two of them as he rose from his chair. He looked exactly like Harry remembered him from the night of his sorting. It was as though he had stopped aging when he had become Headmaster.

"Professor Dumbledore," Harry addressed him. "You're not going to believe this, but we need your help to prevent a murder."

"Two of your students are about to be murdered next Sunday; we think by another student," Ginny added. "And we've come here with a time turner to try and stop it happening."

Explaining their situation to Dumbledore turned out to be much easier than Harry had imagined it would be. Patient and attentive as ever, the elderly wizard listened to them tell their tale of time travel and the danger that the future could be in. They had been as vague as possible about the particulars of how and why the future was so askew, but they had said enough that the Headmaster seemed willing to help. Harry wasn't sure what it had been that convinced Dumbledore to assist them in their mission. Maybe it was their explicit knowledge of the Order of the Phoenix, an organization barely in its infancy in 1974 that made his mind up or perhaps it was merely the description of a future in which Voldemort was out making monarchies; but whatever it was that convinced him, the Headmaster was certainly convinced.

"What can I do for you?" Dumbledore repeated his earlier inquiry, only this time sounding the most sincere that Harry had ever heard him. "What do you need that you have enlisted my aid? And which of my students are in danger, and from whom?"

"We'd ought not tell you those details," Harry admitted. "I'm just afraid of letting too much out. If we give up too much information then it may change the way things are supposed to happen from here on out."

"But aren't you risking that already?" Dumbledore asked him. "Coming here, aren't you already tampering?"

"We are," Harry admitted. "But we know that time went awry. We know it because it happened while we were away with our own time turner and when we returned to the present as we know it: it was all wrong. Voldemort was in power and muggle borns were being kept as pets. We've figured out when time was tampered with and we've come back to fix it. And that's why we need you. If we have your help, then there will be less chance for us to accidentally change anything. We're here to repair the timeline, not to improve upon it."

"Astute of you to recognize the difference," Dumbledore congratulated him. "It is wise beyond your years to restrain yourselves thusly. Trying to improve the future to his or her own ends was likely what resulted in the world you saw a glimpse of; the world with a certain dark wizard at the helm of it. Yes," he paused, nodding his head, "very wise of you to avoid contact with our timeline as best as possible. I will do what I can," he assured them.

"We need Remus Lupin and Peter Pettigrew," Ginny answered him. "And we need you to keep them at school over the holiday. And we'll need a memory charm done on them next Sunday."

"Ah, but we have already hit a snag," Dumbledore informed them. "I cannot keep students at school against their wishes."

"You have to," Harry insisted. "Please," he softened his tone. "I know it's a lot to ask," he allowed, "but really; if we don't do this, two boys will die a week from Sunday and that will cause the timeline to go askew and Voldemort to practically take over the world."

"You're so sure that it's this Easter that set the timeline wrong?" Dumbledore asked, as he fidgeted with the papers on his desk.

"We are," Ginny answered for them. "It was pretty obvious, actually. From the information that we knew already coupled with the information we were able to glean from the disturbing future we saw there is no question left in our minds as to what we need to prevent." Professor Dumbledore nodded his head and scribbled a few notes onto parchment and folded them. The group watched as the folded pages few from the desk and out of a window behind the Headmaster's imposing chair.

"You're going to use Polyjuice?" Dumbledore asked them. Harry nodded. "A clever strategy," he commented. "But if, as you say, one of my students is about to murder two others, why then can I not merely keep him at school and let the others go on holiday?"

"Because we need to find out about him," Ginny answered. "We're going to try to learn who he is, and when he came from, and why he chose this time and place, and these people. There are things that we need to know about him and his motives that we're not likely to learn unless we've got time with him."

"I could attempt to ascertain his motives," Dumbledore offered.

"Best not to," Harry countered. "Really, he'd either not tell you anything, or you might learn too much. I just don't want to endanger the timeline by letting that happen."

"You're likely correct, young man," Dumbledore agreed. "I have sent for the students you have requested to see. Would you like for me to collect the specimens you require without your interacting with the boys in question?" Harry looked at Ginny. She was nodding. That would be the best idea. Harry nodded as well.

"If you don't mind," Harry said to Dumbledore, "We could hide under a charm. Right over there," he suggested, pointing to an area behind a little marble table adjacent to the cabinet containing the Pensieve.

"You may," Dumbledore allowed, "and you should," he added, looking up toward the door as though it had been knocked upon. Harry and Ginny both turned to face the door as well and it was as they were preparing to ask just why their attention was turned to the door, it was indeed knocked upon. "Now," Dumbledore added, rising from his seat to cross to the rapping upon his door. Harry and Ginny scrambled to clear the way and get into the place that they had indicated. Ginny flicked her wand to cast over them the same Disillusionment charm that they'd spent the whole day under and tried their best to keep quiet as Dumbledore pulled open the door.

Into the room ambled the fourteen-year-old and yet perfectly recognizable Gryffindors: Reus Lupin and Peter Pettigrew. Wormtail was dumpier than Harry remembered him, and he seemed less rat-like in his bearings. Harry figured that it was all of those years spent as a rat full time that had caused him to act thusly, as there was very little trace of it now. Remus, for his part, was just as shabby and unkempt as he had always been, although his face was less marred, and the skin on his arms and hands showed much less evidence of his monthly crises as they had later in his life.

Part of Ginny wanted to Hex Pettigrew where he stood for the crimes she knew he would commit in the future. And more than anything she wished to give Remus some encouragement as to what was to come for him; some hint of the attractive and fun loving witch who would twenty plus years from now demand his hand in marriage and present him with a beautiful son. Harry shared such wishes, but was more overwhelmed just by seeing them.

He wasn't sure if it was that he knew the fates of the boys being led into the Headmaster's office, or if it was merely the tangibility of his parents and their friends as third years but whatever was overcoming him, he had to fight it hard not to get teary. One stray sniffle would likely have given up their position and possibly much more than that. Harry was more than a little bit nervous as he watched the two boys come into the room and seat themselves before the Headmaster's desk.

If he'd ever trusted Dumbledore; this was going to have to be the moment.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

I'm not sure I'm happy with this chapter... but I knew I wouldn't be happy re writing it either, and that y'all wouldn't be happy is I made you wait too long for an update. I will try for more over the weekend... but I've got my show. w w w DOT foresttheatre DOT org for those of you who've asked. More soon no matter - Monday at the latest (big audition Mon. p.m. will have to write to wind down) we'll get to see Sirius soon:)

-MQ


	9. Origins of Charlie

Harry and Ginny had no real indication as to just what they'd do with the week that lay ahead of them. Dumbledore had managed blood from Lupin and Pettigrew, but they were still unsure as to how long a single dose of their royally provided Polyjuice potion was apt to last. They'd need to keep up appearances while with the Blacks; so it was easy enough to decide that staying in the Hogwarts vicinity for the week would be a better course of action than trying to stretch the potion.

Their decision was complicated, however, by the full moon that rose over Hogwarts that Friday night. They couldn't very well hide out in the Shrieking Shack while Lupin was undergoing his monthly transformation. And they couldn't just take up residence at Hogwarts; not that they hadn't considered it. There were far too many students and teachers about to allow them ready access to the school. Apparently most of the OWL students and nearly all of the NEWT students had chosen to remain on campus in order to get in some much needed studying. And the entire Slytherin and Ravenclaw Quidditch teams were in detention for unsportsmanlike conduct during their last match.

They had to bide their time in Hogsmeade. They took a room in The Three Broomsticks for the weekend and kept their heads down. By Tuesday afternoon, they'd decided to return to the Shack and, via the secret passage, to Hogwarts. They had to find out about Charlie.

There was a book at Hogwarts; neither of them knew just where it was kept. But in this book was a list of every student that had ever attended the school. The book presented itself to the deputy headmistress once per year so that the letters could be written inviting the next year's students to school. In that book should be the name and date of birth of every boy and girl at Hogwarts; including the enigmatic Charlie.

Harry was sure that whoever Charlie was, he wasn't supposed to be at the school. He was doubtful that a look at the book would give them any more information than a confirmation of that. Either way, it seemed imperative to Harry that they get a look inside of that book.

They both though better than to ask Professor Dumbledore for a look at the tome, but had decided instead to try their luck with the Room of Requirement. Under yet another Disillusionment charm they paced the hallway in front of the door until finally their desperation to get in and not to get caught had become enough to summon the room.

Harry checked the hall to make certain that they'd not be seen before quickly pulling open the door and slipping himself and his fiancé inside. Just as they had requested; the book lay before them. It was the only thing in the room. The volume was lying shut on a small podium atop a massive oak table. Ginny gave a flick of her wand to let go of the Disillusionment charm and began to tiptoe toward the book.

"It seems wrong somehow," Ginny whispered as she rounded the table. Harry moved behind her, nodding.

"I know," he agreed, reaching out a tentative hand but not yet daring to touch the book's leather bindings. "I feel like a criminal," he confessed, turning his head toward her. "But we've got to do this," he added, as though he were looking for confirmation of that.

"Of course we've got to," Ginny encouraged, having gotten the hint and feeling as though she could use some encouragement herself. "We need to know, right?" Harry nodded.

"We need to know," he reiterated. "Well," he sighed, placing his hand onto the leather cover of the hulking text, "Here goes nothing," he allowed. Harry and Ginny sidled up to each other and took a deep breath as Harry slowly unbuckled the leather strap fastening the volume shut.

"Careful, Harry," Ginny warned. "It might be booby-trapped." Harry stopped before sliding the strap from out of the buckle.

"Booby trapped?" he asked.

"You know," Ginny answered, "it might bite," she posited, "or scream, or spray ink at us or… or burst into flames or something."

"Why in the world would it want to do that?" Harry asked her, a most concerned expression coming to his face.

"To keep us out," Ginny said to him; as though it weren't obvious. Ginny forgot sometimes that Harry had grown up in a muggle household; one in which the adults never thought to put a Caterwauling charm or similar on breakable items, hot stoves, or important paperwork to keep the children away. "It might not want anyone other than McGonagall looking in it."

"I hadn't thought of that," Harry admitted. "Do you really think it's booby trapped?" he asked. Ginny shrugged.

"Only one way to find out," Ginny posed, reaching toward the book and finishing the job he'd begun of opening the buckle. She pulled the strap through and opened the cover of the book. Harry let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding as he looked at Ginny and smiled.

"Alright," he commented with a nod.

"Alright," Ginny agreed. She flipped through the pages of the volume, shaking her head. She frowned as she tried to read the inscriptions. "These are in Middle English," Ginny groaned, "and the dates are in Latin. There's no way to read it."

"Turn to the back," Harry suggested, taking the pages in his own hands. "We're looking for later stuff anyway," he added. Ginny nodded her head. The two of them reached together to the last page of the volume and flipped all of the pages at once.

"Look there!" Ginny instructed, pointing to a name on the next to last page. Harry's eyes went to the place his fiancé pointed out.

"Tonks, Nymphadora," he read aloud. He smiled over at a glassy-eyed Ginny. He sighed and put an arm around her.

"She's a year old right now," Ginny said softly. "This feels so wrong," she said to him.

"Think about it," Harry said to her. "If we don't fix things she may wind up someone's pet. Who knows what the blood laws are in that world the Malfoys ruled? Don't you remember how screwed up things were during the war?"

"No, I don't," Ginny sniped. "I was stuck at school, remember?" she asked him. "I didn't know anything. I never heard from you or from home or from anyone about what was going on outside."

"Sorry," Harry said. "I had forgotten that." Ginny shook her head and began turning pages again. He put his hand over hers and turned to face her. "I remember you always being with me," he told her. "I had the Marauders Map and I used to watch you on it at night when I couldn't sleep."

"You did?" she asked him. This was the first mention he'd ever made of so much as having thought about her while he was off hunting Lord Voldemort's Horcruxes.

"I did," he affirmed. "I thought about you all the time. I'm glad that you were protected," he shared. "I'm not sorry that you weren't with me. I'm not sorry that you were safe."

"I'm sorry I wasn't more useful," she said to him. Harry grabbed her by her shoulders.

"Ginny, you were useful," he assured her. "You fought Bellatrix Lestrange. You were…"

"You were gone for a year," she reminded him. "I made myself useful for half an hour."

"No, Ginny," Harry countered. "You were what kept me sane," he told her. "You were safe and it was the only comfort I had."

"I love you Harry," Ginny said to him.

"I love you," he said back to her before letting go of her shoulders and turning more pages in the book. "Okay, here…look." Harry had found the page for 1956. "This should be it."

"No, wait," Ginny corrected him. "Turn one more page." Harry looked at her quizzically, but did as she asked. "This should be it," she said. "That was September of '55 through August of '56. This is September of '56 through August of '57… that's the right year."

"Right," Harry agreed. "Sixth year," he recalled aloud. "And a Ravenclaw." He pointed at the small colored crests next to each of the names of the students.

"There's no one named Charlie," Ginny observed. "Not a Charles or a Charlton or a Chas… not one."

"Could he be repeating a year?" Harry asked.

"A Ravenclaw?" Ginny asked.

"You've got a point," he allowed. "Never been known to happen. Maybe he's ahead a year?"

"Never been done," Ginny told him.

"That we know of," Harry corrected. "We should look. What if he was sick when he should have started school and had to put it off a year?"

"We should look," Ginny allowed, turning the page to the previous year.

"Look there," Harry said to her. He was pointing to a row of names that they both recognized.

"Narcissa Black," Ginny read. "Dorcas Meadowes. Imogene Bulstrode. Frank Longbottom. Tiberius Nott. Matthew Macnair. Harry, Look!" she was pointing to a name halfway down the page. "Charlton Avery."

"Can't be him," Harry countered. He pointed to the tiny crest next to the name. "He's a Slytherin."

"Avery," Ginny grumbled. "He was a Death Eater," she remembered.

"Yeah," Harry agreed. "And I can agree that it's suspect, but this guy's a Slytherin. I don't think it's him."

"We should look," Ginny encouraged. "He could have Confunded Sirius and the others to make him appear like he was a Ravenclaw."

"I suppose," Harry agreed.

"We should," Ginny repeated, "we should look. At least we should check and see if he's gone home for the holiday. If he's still at school then we can at least know that he's not at the Blacks'."

"True," Harry allowed. "I guess that would be okay. It's not like we've anything else to do."

"I'd feel better if we did, anyway," Ginny shared. "Just…it could be him." Harry nodded his head as he shut the book.

"If it's not him, then at least we know that whoever Charlie is; he's a time traveler too." Harry shrugged his shoulders as he moved to re-fasten the straps that buckled the book closed.

"I just don't see anyone being able to Confund the whole school," Ginny observed as she began moving toward the door. "If he doesn't belong here, how come Dumbledore doesn't know?"

"I can't say, Ginny," Harry said as he followed her out from around the table. "It's just that something tells me he's not from here. The idea that he somehow knew that killing my father in his youth would result in a victory for Voldemort… I just think that it's not anyone from the here and now."

"But we know Avery grows up to be a Death Eater," Ginny reminded him as they approached the door leading back into the hallway. "What if some Death Eater went off to Azkaban and then somehow got out, got hold of a time turner, and came back in time to talk Avery into doing this?"

"Talk him into killing himself?" Harry asked her. "If someone came back in time and convinced Avery to do this, then it would have led him to his own death. The only way he could have gotten out of there was with a time turner. Don't you remember Narcissa telling us that all three of them were killed in the accident?"

"He could have Apparated," Ginny suggested. Harry shook his head.

"Not out of that house, he couldn't have," he commented. "The Blacks would have had wards up. There is no way that anyone could come or go off of that property without setting off something. But if he left via a time turner, then nothing would have set off."

"You do have a point there," Ginny conceded. She knew that even her own house was protected by wards of no small magnitude and she could only guess that a manor house as old and as mysterious as that of the Blacks of Coventry. "I'm sure that there had to be something manipulated if he was able to Apparate out of there."

"We should still check," he assured her that he hadn't put aside her concerns, no matter how convinced he was to the contrary.

"Yes, we should," Ginny affirmed as she pulled open the door and peeked into the hall. "Of course, I have no idea how we might recognize him."

"We could spend the evening in the Slytherin common room," Harry suggested. "See if anyone says anything…?" Ginny nodded, but then stopped still and put her hand on his elbow.

"We don't know how to get to the Slytherin common room," she reminded him. Harry bit his lip and looked at her.

"I do," he shared. Harry brought out his wand and cast a Disillusionment charm over them.

"How?" Ginny asked as he led her down the corridor to the stairs. Harry swallowed hard. There was a reason he'd never told her this story.

"Second year," he said softly, careful that there may be ears about. "We were trying to find out about the heir of Slytherin," Harry shook his head. "Hermione brewed a batch of Polyjuice potion and we posed as Crabbe and Goyle to get Malfoy to tell us what he knew."

"That was clever," Ginny said to him, with an unexpected air of surprise in her voice. "So you know where we're going?" Harry nodded to her and took her hand in his.

He led her down several flights of stairs and around several corridors until they reached the castle dungeons. They moved quickly through the winding underground hallways, past the potions classroom and the potion master's office. They stopped in front of the first fully blank area of stone they came to. "This is it, then?" Ginny asked. Harry nodded again.

"Now we wait," he whispered, leaning against the far wall. The weren't forced to wait for long. Unlike their quest for the password to the Headmaster's office days prior, the wait for entry into the Slytherin dungeon lasted less than ten minutes. Apparently it was just after dinner, and a large group of upper class Slytherins came toward their position.

"_Corpus delicti_," called one of the girls. She was slightly built, with blonde hair and a too-short skirt on. The wall disappeared and the bunch of them clambered through the newly opened door and into the Slytherin common room. "Imogene!" the same girl called out. Another girl, with brown hair and her hand in the pocket of the boy next to her, turned her head in response.

"What?" Imogene answered.

"You going to answer Cissy's letter?" she asked. Imogene shrugged her shoulders.

"I got a second one," Imogene shared.

"What did this one say?" the blonde asked her friend.

"Areneya!" a slender young man admonished. "It's none of your business what the letter said."

"Poppycock, Tiberius," Areneya challenged him. "You're still mad that we'll not tell you what the first one is about."

"What?" Tiberius asked with a shrug as he flopped himself down onto one of the green leather couches flanking the fireplace. "Cissy's my friend too," he said to them, not at all denying the accusation Areneya had lobbed at him.

"She's not your friend," the boy whose pockets Imogene had been sticking her hands into countered. "You've taken her out three times. You're dating her… and that's not being her friend."

"Matthew; we've known each other since we were little," Tiberius said. Imogene was shaking her head.

"What is it, hon?" Matthew asked when he saw her head shaking.

"Tiberius," Imogene said to him, sliding herself onto the couch next to him. "I hate to be the bearer of bad news," she shared. "But you and Cissy are not dating."

"Of course we are," he disagreed.

"See, you admit it," a very satisfied Matthew commented.

"No," Imogene said to him. "You're not. If you really want to know what that letter said…" She turned her head to look each of them in the eye. "And if any of you say a word about this I'll tell Cissy you stole the letter and then I'll egg her on to write her sister about it."

"Her sister ran off," Tiberius snickered at the empty threat.

"I meant the other one," Imogene clarified. It seemed to shut up the whole group of them that she had just threatened them with the wrath of Bellatrix. Imogene nodded. "Lucius Malfoy kissed her last night," she told the crowd. The boys all looked stunned and the girls thrilled at the revelation. "And it freaked her out. But the second letter says that they're going to Castle Cary to hear the Sympheign Sorcerers tonight."

"Malfoy?" Tiberius seemed totally shocked, as did another boy who had seated himself on the opposite couch.

"Yes," Imogene confirmed. "And I can't wait to hear what happens tonight. I've half a mind to go to London myself and wait for them to get back."

"She's staying with Bella and Roddy then?" the boy across from Tiberius asked.

"I'd forgotten you're so tight with the Lestranges, Avery," Imogene answered. "But no; she's with her aunt and uncle and cousins until Friday." Well, then; they had their answer. Charlton Avery was in the Slytherin common room. Just as Harry suspected, he wasn't the culprit. Harry couldn't help but feel a little dirty standing there eavesdropping on the news, but they were going to have to wait until the room cleared out to go back through the door.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Harry and Ginny don't love me like the Malfoys do... they didn't want to come out and play for several days. But the plot bunny is biting now...

THANKS to all of the wonderful folks who have reviewed and I hope to hear from you again... more soon!

-MQ


	10. Being the Marauders

Tuesday through Thursday was easy enough to get through. Harry and Ginny lay low in the Shrieking Shack, catching up on sleep and doing what they could to enjoy their time alone; which their schedules rarely afforded them in their regular lives. Thursday evening they made a trip into Hogsmeade, shopping at Gladrags for clothing that would fit the fourteen year-old Lupin and Pettigrew they were about to become for the weekend along with a pair of satchels appropriate for traveling schoolboys.

They packed up their new things along with some parcels out of Ginny's Harpies travel satchel and Apparated to London. They had purposely mixed up their bottles of Polyjuice potion, not wanting to quarrel over which of them got to be Lupin and which had to be Pettigrew. They found a secluded glen in the park just across from number twelve Grimmauld Place and clinked bottles before each taking a swig of the potion.

They made a point not to observe each other as they underwent the uncomfortable and unpleasant transformation into the boys that the potion would turn them into. Once the last grunt had come from either of them, Harry turned his face to look at his fiancé. "You drew the short straw," he said to her, frowning that the pretty Ginny Weasley had been replaced by the rat-like visage of Wormtail Pettigrew. Ginny shrugged.

"It had to be one of us," she allowed, pulling on a jumper from her bag and changing into shoes that fit her new body. "And it's not like it's forever," she added.

"True," Harry agreed, shrugging at his newly transformed fiancé. "You ready?" he asked once she had all of her 'Ginny' things back in her satchel. She nodded her head. The two of them moved decisively toward the door to Sirius' house.

"Probably better that I'm Wormtail," Ginny observed. "I don't think that I can make my voice sound like either of them, and as Pettigrew I can be quiet. You do all the talking, Harry," she suggested. Harry nodded as they began to alight the stairs leading to the front door to the house.

"Good idea," Harry encouraged. He reached up and knocked on the door. It was only a second until it swung open to allow them inside. Kreacher let go of the door and moved aside just as they passed the threshold.

"Kreacher, who's there?" a shrill and familiar voice hollered toward the door. Kreacher did not answer; he merely trotted away toward the sound of the voice. Harry and Ginny looked down the hallway toward the noise. Bellatrix Black came charging out of the dining room and into the hall. "Kreacher!" she bellowed as she came. Bellatrix stopped in her tracks when she saw the two of them in the hall. "Oh," she groaned, regarding them. "It's you lot." She shook her head and rolled her eyes. "Gryffindor baggage!" she called out, louder even than she'd called for Kreacher. "The other Gryffindor baggage is here!" Bella snarled at them and turned on her heel back toward the dining room.

Immediately Harry and Ginny heard footfalls on the stairs. They looked up to see Sirius bounding down the steps toward them. "You made it!" he exclaimed. Sirius was incredible to behold. He was so young looking; not that that wasn't to be expected. But there was something wonderful about seeing him as a fourteen year-old without a care in the world. Harry was hardly able to think straight with his godfather's younger self standing right there.

"Er… yeah," Harry answered, in as close to the voice of the young Remus Lupin as he was able to come out with. "Peter finished his detentions and I got through what was keeping me… so we decided to come."

"So glad…"Sirius tilted his head and frowned at them. "You alright, man?" he asked. "You sound a little hoarse."

"Yeah," Harry answered, nodding his head. "It's nothing," he added. Sirius nodded and winked his eye. Maybe Lupin was often hoarse after a transformation. Either way, Sirius seemed to buy the explanation, so Harry was content not to press the issue.

"Dinner's in ten, mates," Sirius told his friends. "James is bunking with me, and Charlie claimed the room by my brother's. My cousin," Sirius looked at Harry as though that comment had ought to mean something, "is in the little room with the lacy damned curtains. So you lot can take the guest room at the top of the stairs." He elbowed Harry in the ribs. "That is if you, Peter, can promise to keep Remus in line." Harry had no idea what Sirius was talking about. Remus Lupin certainly couldn't have had a crush on Bellatrix…? "Don't unpack, though," he added. "We're all going to Coventry tomorrow to have Easter dinner with Cissy's parents."

"I hear the strains of the Gryffindor baggage," called a cool but pleasant sounding voice from the top of the stairs. Harry and Ginny looked up just in time to catch sight of Narcissa Black sashaying down the stairs in apricot satin dress robes. "Hello Remus," she greeted Harry, "and …Peter, is it?" she asked of Ginny. Harry kept quiet while Ginny just nodded. "You'd ought to hurry and dress for dinner," she recommended as she passed them and headed toward the dining room.

Harry couldn't help but let his eyes follow her down the stairs. It was strange to see her at seventeen after the way she had been in the future they'd come from. She looked beautiful; young and healthy and with color in her cheeks.

"Put your tongue back into your mouth Remus," Sirius chuckled at him.

"My to…" Harry finally got what Sirius had just said about being kept in line. So Remus Lupin had once had a crush on Narcissa Black. Well, that was a bit much to swallow. Although Harry couldn't blame him necessarily; she was very pretty. However, Harry was most concerned that Ginny might have thought he was looking at her for the reasons that Lupin might have. Harry shook his head and rolled his eyes at Sirius.

"And you're about to lose your bet, mate," Sirius said, with another elbow to Harry's ribs. "Malfoy's been over here this week," he shared. "He spent the night on Monday, with Bellatrix and her vile husband. And they kissed." Sirius patted Harry's shoulder. "I overheard her telling Bellatrix all about it. Then Tuesday he took her to a concert and apparently told her he was planning to propose."

"You're sure?" Harry asked, trying his best to play along. Sirius nodded.

"I am," he answered. "You know eavesdropping is my favorite hobby. She told Bella that's what he said. Of course, he could have just been trying to get into her knickers." Harry nodded again. "But he could have been serious. And if he was; then you're about to be out ten galleons."

"I'll believe it when I see it," Harry answered.

"Go get changed, guys," Sirius said to them. "I'll see you in the dining room." Harry and Ginny nodded and went the rest of the way up the stairs and into the same guest room that Walburga Black had shown them to in the future they were trying to avoid. Once they were safely behind the door. Harry flopped himself down on the bed nearest the window and looked over at Ginny.

"You know I wasn't checking her out," he defended. Ginny chuckled.

"I know," she agreed. "I couldn't stop looking either," she admitted. "What… with the way she looked when we left the awful future and the way she looked in the proper future… it's just weird."

"It really is," Harry agreed. He looked down at his clothes and then back at Ginny.

"Do you think there's some kind of transfiguration we could do to make these robes look dressy enough for dinner?" he asked.

"Considering what Narcissa's wearing," Ginny qualified, "likely not. But I'm sure we could do something." Ginny sighed and nodded. She removed her wand from the pocket where she stashed it and worked a reasonable transfiguration on both of their outfits. In their green and brown corduroys and velours they made their way back down the stairs and into the Blacks' dining room.

They enjoyed Kreacher's cooking; as usual. But if dinner with the Blacks of the improper future was weird; this dinner was downright bizarre. They were seated at the foot of the table with Sirius, James, and the boy called Charlie who they were so anxious to find out about. Beyond them sat Bellatrix and Rodolphus Lestrange, Rodolphus' brother Rabastan, Barty Crouch, Jr., Narcissa, and the ten year-old Regulus Black. At the head of the table was a younger Orion and Walburga Black than the ones they'd met in the wrong future, but they certainly seemed no different than younger versions of those people.

Sitting at this table was quite possibly the strangest thing that Harry had ever been party to; and that included his recent audiences with centaurs and the Witch Queen. He tried not to be obvious as he listened to, and hung on, every word his father and his grandfather exchanged. James Potter was a fun person to be around, and Sirius had a wit that Harry realized he had only ever gotten a taste of. He had to be so careful to watch himself and his behavior. Harry spent the entire meal with his mouth as full as possible and thinking repeatedly of the times he'd seen Remus and Sirius interact with each other; he had to remember to stay in character no matter what he might want to say to his father and godfather.

They kept their mouths full and quiet for the duration of dinner and made excuses about a long travel day and another one tomorrow in order to excuse themselves from the group and lock themselves in their room. Sirius gave Harry a wink as they left the table after dessert; likely he thought Remus to be trying to escape without saying anything asinine in front of Narcissa.

"I don't think anybody caught on," Ginny observed, divesting herself of her transfigured dress robes and passing her wand back over them to change them back into what they'd looked like originally. "I mean… I don't think Sirius or anyone knew anything was off."

"Yeah," Harry agreed. "Me neither," he sighed and flopped himself onto his bed. "Of course, your red hair is starting to show through," he shared.

"Damn!" Ginny exhorted, turning quickly to check her reflection in a nearby mirror. Sure enough; her hair was longer now than it had been as Pettigrew, and its color was surely returning. Her freckles were coming out again, too.

"No, it's good," Harry countered. "We know better now how long a single swallow of the Polyjuice potion lasts."

"It was almost three hours," Ginny agreed, combing through her rapidly returning locks with her fingers.

"Think the coach ride tomorrow will be longer than that?" he asked her. Ginny shrugged.

"I've got it covered if it is," she told him.

"You have?" an almost fully back-to-normal Harry asked her. He divested himself of his dress robes and couldn't help himself but watch as Ginny's girlish figure returned to her beneath the thin cotton of the boy's undershirt she was wearing.

"Trust me," she said to him, pointing her wand at the door to lock it.

"Alright," Harry conceded. "I trust you."

"Bed soon?" she asked, slipping her wand under the pillow on the bed closest to the door. Harry nodded. He flicked his wand to put the lights out and slithered beneath the turned down covers of his bed.

"You don't have to sleep over there, you know," Harry informed her.

"Yes I do," Ginny challenged, getting underneath her own covers. "And it's not because I want to," she added. "There may be charms in this house that keep the doors from being locked against the people who live here. Fred and George did it to the Burrow once," she shared. "They could get in to mum and dad's room to look for their Christmas presents, and into the closet where mum kept her potion ingredients. If Sirius, or anyone from his family, were to come into the room; they might not be able to see our faces in the dark, but they'd be able to tell if we're in the same bed."

"And since we're supposed to be Lupin and Pettigrew…" Harry added, getting her gist.

"Right," Ginny affirmed. "Goodnight Harry," she added.

"Goodnight Ginny," he answered. Harry rolled over to face the window and shut his eyes. "What did you think of Charlie?" he asked.

"I don't know," Ginny answered him. "He was as quiet as we were," she observed. Harry nodded, never bothering to take his head off of his pillow. "Do you think it's for the same reason?"

"That he was afraid of the sound of his own voice?" Ginny asked, turning in her bed to face him. There was a tiny bit of moonlight coming in through the window sheers, and she was just able to make out the outline of Harry's head on the pillow as he lay on his back.

"Because he didn't really know what to say," Harry offered his correction. "If he wasn't at all used to dining here then it goes to show that he'd be quiet at the table. You notice my dad," Harry heard himself gulp as he said that, "my dad and Sirius were chatting away," he finished his sentence.

"But Charlie was as quiet as we were," Ginny agreed.

"Yeah," Harry affirmed softly.

"Harry," Ginny addressed him.

"Yeah?" he answered.

"I'm really proud of you," she told him. "If it was the other way around…" she tried to explain. "If it were Fred," she settled on, "If it were any of my relations… I just don't know how I'd be able to handle it. You're really brave," she added. "Especially knowing what things will turn out to be…"

"Thanks," he interrupted her. Harry had no interest in dwelling on things that had and would transpire. It had been a long enough day and tomorrow promised to be longer. "Goodnight," he wished her by way of ending the conversation.

"Good night Harry," she answered him. Ginny knew better than to keep talking after that prompt, so she closed her eyes and allowed herself to drift off.

The sun through the window sheers was as potent in 1974 as it had been in 2001 and woke Harry before the sun had finished rising. Harry groaned and shifted under the covers before remembering what he was to do that day and deciding that getting out of the bed and readying himself for the day would be the ideal course of action. He rose and dressed, washed his face, brushed his teeth, and woke Ginny just before drinking his potion.

Ginny glowered at him as she rolled out of bed. She drank down her potion just after he did, and then shooed him out the door so that she could get ready in peace. Harry knew himself well enough not to want to interact much until he had some coffee in him, so he gladly left Ginny to her morning ablutions as he descended the stairs in search of caffeine. Lycoris Black had offered them coffee and breakfast in the drawing room where the Black family tapestry was hung, and he figured it the best place to start his search.

Coffee service was right where he expected it to be. The drawing room was occupied more so than he would have thought for this time of morning, but no one seemed to pay him too much mind as he served himself from the silver coffee service. He was sure that he'd seen Remus Lupin drinking coffee at some juncture, so he hoped that his need for caffeine was at least somewhat in character. No matter what Remus Lupin's usual behavior, however, Harry Potter was having a cup of coffee and there was no two ways about it.

Harry sat quietly in a corner with his coffee and listened in on the plans that were being made for the morning's trip to Coventry. By the time Ginny arrived downstairs Harry had a thorough knowledge of the morning's journey. They would be leaving within the hour; taking coaches that should be arriving in Grimmauld place presently. Orion and Walburga Black would be in the first coach with Narcissa and Regulus and the five boys would be traveling in the second one. Bellatrix, Rodolphus, Rabastan, and Barty had spent the night at the Lestranges' nearby townhouse and would be arriving in time for tea.

Kreacher was already getting trunks and satchels together; piling the luggage into the foyer. Sirius, James, and Charlie joined the group just in time for the bunch of them to be herded into the coach by Mr. and Mrs. Black. Harry knew that they were almost two hours into their three hour window by the time they managed to get underway.

The coach was lovely; driven by a bearded gentleman in a top hat and drawn by a half dozen silver Percherons. It was a giant Black four door vehicle with blue and purple satin appointments in the interior. The ample bench seats were of black leather and more than large enough to fit three abreast. Harry and Ginny seated themselves across from the other three, in the backwards facing seat. James and Sirius were chatting about Gryffindor's chances at the Quidditch cup for the year and Harry pretended to be very interested in the landscape as it passed by the windows of the coach.

They had reached the end of town, passed the suburbs, and were heading firmly into the country when Ginny reached into her robe pocket and produced a handful of candy. "James," she called, tossing a piece to him, "Sirius, Charlie," she added, passing candies to each as she named them. She then put her hand back into her pocket and produced two more sweets, handing one to Harry and keeping the other for herself. "I almost forgot," she told them. "I got these in Hogsmeade. We went to Honeydukes while we waited for the train."

"Nice," Sirius commented, popping the chocolate into his mouth at the same time Ginny and Harry ate theirs. James and Charlie followed suit and Harry had to frown as Ginny turned to him and waggled Pettigrew's eyebrows at him. Before Harry had finished chewing up the caramel center of the candy he'd been given, the three boys sitting across from him appeared to be sound asleep.

"What…?" Harry whispered.

"Told you I had it covered," Ginny spoke to him in her normal voice and at normal volume. She pulled another candy from her pocket and showed it to him. It was imprinted with an uppercase 'W' with two lower case 'd's flanking it. "They're called drowsy drops," Ginny explained. "A George Weasley original product," she added with a smile. I had them in my travel satchel. "These three will be out for at least two hours. And nothing will be able to wake them. Clever, really," she commented.

"Ginny, you're brilliant!" Harry exclaimed. Part of him wanted to kiss her for her quick thinking; but the fact that she was wearing the face of Wormtail Pettigrew at the moment was enough to make him reconsider.

"I'm aware, thanks," she said back to him, grinning. "But it's always nice to hear it." Harry sighed; her taking such a step had certainly taken a load off of his mind. They'd not have to worry at all about the potion wearing off in full view of the others. And they'd have at least two hours to discuss just what to do when they got to Coventry.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Told you the plot bunny was nibbling at me again. I will try to get more done over the weekend.

THANKS to those of you who are reviewing- it is the font from which I draw the majority of my self esteem. And SPECIAL thanks to Fairmaidofkent... I made Slytherin! Told ya... :)

CHEERS!!

-MQ


	11. The Fateful Easter

The ride to Coventry had been no trouble at all; what with Sirius, James, and Charlie out cold for most of it. And once they had arrived at Cygnus and Druella Black's country estate, it had been easy enough to excuse themselves whenever time warranted the next dose of Polyjuice potion. The real challenge, it turned out, was keeping themselves believable as Remus and Wormtail. Harry, for his part, discovered that Lupin's silence was nearly always attributed to his dwelling on the rumored kiss between Narcissa Black and Lucius Malfoy. That was an easy enough ploy for Harry to go along with; both allowing him to remain in character as Lupin and to keep quiet for long periods at a stretch. Ginny, on the other hand, would use time alone or with only Harry to try and produce a believable sounding Pettigrew impersonation. She'd only ever heard Wormtail speak for a few short minutes that afternoon in Dumbledore's office, but in less than a day she'd been able to create a passable impression.

The Blacks were, quite surprisingly, a pleasant enough lot. Even Bellatrix was less nasty and reprehensible than either Harry or Ginny might have guessed possible. Mostly the family kept to themselves, leaving the school-age boys largely unmolested save the occasional intrusion by ten-year-old Regulus. Friday night they'd amused themselves with a wireless set and a game of Exploding Snap. All day Saturday they'd spent rotating through a series of two-on-two Quidditch games on the manor's front lawns. Harry had fun pretending to have only marginal skill at flying all the time watching his father play brilliantly. Ginny, luckily enough, had just a difficult enough time flying in an unfamiliar body to quell any fears Harry initially had about her being too good a Quidditch player to remain believable as Pettigrew.

They knew that the accident which they were there to prevent had happened, or rather _was going to happen_, on Sunday; so they let themselves relax a little and enjoy their weekend with fourteen year old James and Sirius as best they could. Charlie, though, remained as much a mystery into Saturday night as he had been when the Remus Lupin in Azkaban had first mentioned him. His family name, they'd learned, was McClosky. His parents were (according to what they had managed to glean) some sort of Ministerial cultural attaches to Papua New Guinea. Harry had never heard of such a posting; so he figured the story to be entirely bunk. Of course, he and Ginny were already suspect of Charlie's existence and were almost fully convinced that he had come from the future to change his reality by the murder of James Potter and Sirius Black.

Harry kept waiting for someone to mention Voldemort in their presence. Surely Bellatrix and her husband had heard of him by now? If someone were to mention the Dark Lord, then it would be reasonable for Harry and Ginny to continue the conversation with Charlie included. They both suspected that Voldemort was likely the boy's motivation and that there might be an obvious 'tell' were the topic to have come up. Unfortunately for their scheming, the Blacks seemed to keep all talk of politics and all other indelicate matters away from ladies and schoolboys. The result of this prohibition was that by Sunday morning, Harry and Ginny knew scarcely more about their suspect than they had upon arriving in Coventry.

Ginny had mentioned more than once that this Charlie McClosky bore no small resemblance to Charlton Avery as he had appeared in the Slytherin common room. She had posited that the two young men might be related; a particularly viable theory knowing what Avery would grow up to be. That was just one more theory that they were going to have to explore when the time was right.

No matter their theories; Harry and Ginny were certain as they descended the stairs toward the Blacks' dining room for Easter dinner that they were going to have answers before the day was out. They were almost jumpy as they seated themselves at the foot of the table and waited for the meal to begin. They were both near sure that they looked a bit daffy in their state of hyper-awareness; particularly having caught each other in turn hanging on Charlie's every word.

Dinner was civilized enough; if not a bit overdone. Was there ever a need for portions that large? The Black family ate this meal in the self same near silence that had been the hallmark of most repast in this household. Apparently talking while eating was rude; as was leaving too much on your plate. These two facts combined to make meals thoroughly staid and more than a little bit boring. If it hadn't been for the exceptional quality of the food on the table, Harry and Ginny (who were used to family meals as nearly raucous affairs) might have gone mad with it.

It was only during dessert that they ever heard Druella Black's voice. The coffee was being served as the cakes and pies and tarts were being passed around. "Cissy," Druella addressed her youngest daughter. Narcissa tilted her head toward her mother's surprise address and frowned.

"Yes mother?" she asked, picking her coffee up and taking a tiny sip.

"Your aunt Walburga tells me that a young man came to call on you while you were in London," her mother said back to her. Narcissa stiffened in her seat and her eyes grew wide as she set her cup back onto its saucer.

"This is hardly appropriate conversation for the table, mother," Narcissa chided, clearly hoping that would be the end of the conversation.

"It's hardly appropriate for my daughter to be out until all hours with a gentleman whom I have never met and have no knowledge of," Druella countered. Harry bit his lip. He could tell what was happening; Narcissa had done something that her mother disagreed with and being called out at the table was her punishment.

"She was home by eleven, mother," Bellatrix inserted. Narcissa seemed to relax at her sister's words and she silently mouthed her thanks to the older girl. "And you have met him," Bellatrix added, "half a dozen times," she clarified. "It was Lucius Malfoy," Bella explained. "He's an old friend of mine; he was prefect in Slytherin, and he was here last New Year's day with his father and the Minister. Can we drop it now?"

Druella Black shook her head but didn't speak again. She was looking at Narcissa as though she approved, though, and Narcissa seemed to relax even more as she continued to sip her coffee and began picking at the slice of pie that had found itself before her.

"Do any of you have schoolwork to get finished tonight?" Cygnus Black addressed the youngsters at the end of the table. Narcissa shook her head daintily.

"No sir," she answered him. "Only to study for exams," she clarified, "and with the extra work I put in over Christmas, I'm more than prepared." Black smiled at his daughter.

"Boys…?" he leaned his elbow on the table to address the five of them at the foot of the table. Sirius looked back at his uncle and nodded his head.

"Yes sir," Sirius answered with a frown. "We've got potions to do for Slughorn that we're supposed to be bringing back with us."

"But no worries," Charlie asserted. "I'm going to help," he shared. "I got an 'O' on my potions OWL." Harry felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. This was it, then. After dinner they were going to work on potions. Walburga Black eyed her son and his friends.

"You'll be finished by tea time?" she snipped. Sirius rolled his eyes and nodded his head. They'd all learned better than to miss tea time with Mrs. Black.

"Yes mother," Sirius groaned.

"You may use my potions cellar," Cygnus told them. "Sirius, I trust you know where it is?" Sirius suddenly sat up much straighter.

"Yes sir," he answered his uncle, nodding. This was obviously a big deal.

"I've let my girls use it for their schoolwork over the years," Black explained. "And I trust that any NEWT level wizard will have appropriate respect for the ingredients down there." All of the boys were nodding now; Harry and Ginny even found themselves nodding along with the others. They could only imagine what sorts of things might be found in a potions cellar belonging to a Black and they both made mental note to be overly careful when entering.

Through dessert, Cygnus and Orion Black shared with the others stories of potion making and exams and what sort of things were expected on exams in their years at school. After cake and coffee and enough of listening to the two pompous windbags blustering about the decline of Hogwarts under Headmaster Dumbledore, the boys excused themselves to their homework. Harry's heart was in his throat as they descended the stairs into the cellar.

There was no way to know just how this murder had happened, and therefore what hint might be forthcoming that it was upon them. It occurred to Harry that they had made no concrete plan as to how they were going to handle confronting Charlie once the time came. He thought in the moment that he'd rather not wait until he could see it coming; lest that moment be an instant too late to do anything about it. They hadn't come this far just to get themselves blown up with the others.

Sirius led them through a labyrinthine series of corridors in the cold, stone cellar, and then down an additional short flight of stairs that led them to a massive iron and brass door. Sirius shook his head as he turned the oversized handle and let his friends into the room. "I've never been allowed in here," he explained as the four others clambered into the dark room.

Once they were all inside, the door closed itself behind them, and a light suddenly appeared above their heads. Harry did a double take as he looked around the oval-shaped room. There were shelves from floor to ceiling; filled to capacity with vials and boxes and pouches of potion ingredients indexed by region and alphabet. In the center of the room there was tall table, the top of which looked like a foot-thick section of a tree trunk cut from some enormous oak. The top of the table was pock marked, scarred it seemed by several generations' potion making. There was a cabinet to the right of the entry with glass doors on it, and containing all of the necessary implements for potion making.

"Caldrons," Charlie said, regarding the cabinet. He pulled open the doors and began setting a series of iron and copper cauldrons onto the table behind him. He also withdrew silver knives, strainers, presses, and a couple of stands for cauldrons that would need to heat beyond what a wooden table should be forced to endure. "He's got everything in here," Charlie observed, sounding more than a little bit impressed.

"There's a reason we're not allowed down here," Sirius affirmed. "You've not even looked at the ingredients yet. There's enough crackling incendiary herb and firecrab shell and fierce snake venom down here to kill us all three times over." Harry's breath caught in his throat. Had Sirius been the one to give Charlie the idea to begin with? Had that mention been all that it took to seed the plan in his mind?

"Head's up," Ginny called to Charlie. She had thrown something at him that Harry couldn't see. "Sirius," she also tossed something to him, "James, Remus," she was tossing candies about and Harry immediately popped his into his mouth. Ginny ate her piece, too, and they both seemed to hold their breath as the other boys thankfully ate theirs.

Then things happened very quickly. Charlie fell to his knees, retching and coughing. Sirius and James sunk onto the floor at the rear of the table and Ginny drew her wand. "What the…?" Harry wasn't sure at all what was going on, save that his fiancée had just made some sort of decisive move.

"Drowsy drops," Ginny explained, nodding her head toward the unconscious boys on the floor.

"And him?" Harry asked, watching Charlie on the floor, losing the majority of the massive dinner he had just enjoyed onto the stones.

"A puking pastille," Ginny informed him. Of course, he should have known that; the puking pastille had been a staple of Weasley's Wizard Wheezes since the twins were both still at Hogwarts.

"Ginny, I could kiss you," Harry said to her with a chuckle. "Even looking like Wormtail," he qualified.

"What…?" Charlie was trying to ask them what was going on, but he wasn't able to get much out of his mouth without his nausea overtaking him again. Ginny pointed her wand at him and he froze still where he was.

"You'll stay petrified until we're ready for you," Ginny said to the terrified looking heap of Charlie on the floor. She then pointed her wand at the mess he had made on the floor and it cleaned itself presently. "What should we do now, Harry?" she asked. "Should we try to get out of here?" Harry nodded. He grabbed old of Charlie's robes and reached for Ginny. She nodded as well and withdrew the time turner from her inside pocket. She wrapped the golden chain around the three of them and spun the turner over and over again until she had counted enough to be almost certain that they had returned to the year they had left.

The room they were in was clearly the same, but had obviously fallen into disuse by this time. There were few bottles left on the shelves, and even those appeared mostly empty and covered by an inch thick layer of dust. The cabinet remained in its place but appeared as though there was nothing inside of it but cobwebs. "It hasn't been blown up," Ginny said. Harry shrugged. He smiled at her.

"Dinner went long," he mused. Ginny frowned at him and then nodded her head as she felt the length of her red hair beginning to return to her. He reached into his pocket and returned his glasses to his face as he began to feel his own transformation back to himself. He looked down at the frightened and petrified boy he still had hold of and let him go with a sigh. Ginny flicked her wand at him again and he flopped limply against the floor.

Charlie's eyes were wide and his mouth fell open. "Harry Potter?" he gasped, almost whimpered.

"Why am I not surprised you knew my name?" Harry asked him, drawing his own wand on the boy. "_Accio wand_!" Harry ordered, holding out his other hand to catch Charlie's wand as it flew from his robes.

"Good thinking," Ginny congratulated, tilting her head toward the newly acquired wand.

"Thanks," Harry answered. "Auror training first day; always get their wand."

"Smart," Ginny affirmed, still pointing her wand at Charlie. "Of course," she said to Harry, still facing Charlie, but looking at her fiancé with her eyes. "If you're going to act as an Auror while we're in here, then I can't torture our friend here even if he doesn't want to tell us what he's up to."

"Now now, Ginny," Harry went along with her ploy. He knew that Ginny would no more use the Cruciatus curse than the man in the moon, but he was willing to wager that Charlie had no such assurances. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves," he said to her. "I've been known to be awfully forgetful at times," he said. "And this heap will be dead by the time we're done with him, so it's really no matter, now, is it?" Harry frowned at Charlie. He had curled himself into the fetal position and was rocking back and forth on the stone floor. There were tears on his face and he was making a retching noise again. Ginny withdrew a vial from her robes and bent down to Charlie.

"Here," she said to him, putting the bottle into his hands. "This will make you stop that." Harry was surprised that Charlie took her at her word and drank the contents of the bottle. Hadn't she just threatened to torture him? Perhaps he was so miserable from the puking pastille that he would do just about anything to make it stop. To Harry's surprise, Charlie did cease his retching noises and sat up.

"What was that?" Harry asked, gesturing toward the now empty potion bottle.

"Puking pastille wore itself off," she told him. "That was our gift from the Royal Potions Master," she shared. Brilliant!

"Your what…?" Charlie suddenly felt the inclination to speak.

"What's your name?" Ginny asked the boy on the floor, flicking her wand to bind him at the wrists and ankles.

"Charlton Oglethorpe Pius Avery the second," he answered, the look on his face clearly indicative of his surprise at having divulged this information.

"I knew it!" Ginny exclaimed. "I told you he looked like Avery," she said to Harry before turning back to Charlie.

"What's your date of birth?" she asked him, scowling at him.

"May the twenty second nineteen ninety five," he replied.

"Where did you get your time turner?" Harry asked, stepping closer to Charlie and putting his wand right in the cowering boy's face.

"Mundungus Fletcher," he answered.

"Do you have it with you?" Ginny asked.

"Yes," Charlie answered her, nodding. He reached underneath his robes at the neck and withdrew a shining silver and gold hourglass charm for Ginny's inspection. She snatched it from him and gasped as she held it out to Harry,

"This is ours," she said to him. Harry examined the time turner. It was identical to the one that had brought them to and from the past twice in recent memory. "Do you think that Dung might have…?" Harry shrugged his shoulders and took the item from her.

"What was the date when you used this to come back and commit murder?" he asked Charlie.

"May twenty second two thousand and twelve," he answered. His seventeenth birthday.

"And why did you do it?" Ginny asked, shaking her head and balling her hands into fists. Charlie looked Harry in the eye and snarled.

"My father rots in Azkaban thanks to you," he spat. "I barely knew him before your office had him arrested and put away forever. I took Professor Lynch's class," he told them, "I know my history. And I know that Harry Potter defeated the Lord Voldemort as a little child and then again when I was three…and so I knew that if I could make it to where Harry Potter was never born then I would live in a world where my father was a free man."

Harry was beginning to puzzle this together. Charlton Avery the Death Eater had a three year old son when he was arrested at the end of the war. This boy, Charlton Avery the second, had learned at Hogwarts of the way the Death Eaters had fallen; not once but twice. He waited until he was seventeen and free of the Trace and did what he could to change history.

Harry shook his head and pocketed Charlie's time turner. He wrapped the chain from the one that had brought them there around the three of them. "What are you doing?" Ginny asked.

"I'm taking him to the Auror office in his own year before the Veritaserum wears off," he explained.

"We should get out of here first," Ginny suggested. "I don't think anybody lives here right now," she explained, "if that's the case then the wards should let us Apparate out of here."

"You're right," Harry agreed. "Let's go back to the Shrieking Shack and then we'll take him when we're going. The last thing that we need is to run into whoever runs this house in a decade." Ginny nodded and snatched Charlie by the collar.

"I'll bring this one," Ginny said to him, nodding her head toward Charlie, who had a look on his face indicative of the fact he'd just become aware of the fact that he'd been given Veritaserum.

"Right then," Harry affirmed. He pocketed Charlie's wand and Apparated himself out of there.

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One more chapter and then this one will be finished. THANKS for all of the reviews and I PROMISE fluff before September is out. I am working on a tragedy for the HP Lexicon writing contest but that's due Friday and after that it'll be one of two pieces of L/N fluff; I PROMISE. Give me more reviews please and said fluff will appear faster...

Cheers and LOVE YA!

-MQ


	12. Return to Now

Harry and Ginny had done as they planned. First they Apparated themselves to the Shrieking Shack and retrieved Ginny's travel satchel, which she had hidden there in 1974. Apparently she had hidden it well enough, as the bag was covered in dust and cobwebs, but it remained where she had left it. She _Scourgified_ the satchel and all of its contents, setting her things out on the ottoman to assure that they were all properly cleaned. Ginny gladly changed out of the clothing she had bought to play the part of Wormtail and back into her Harpies uniform; not exactly what she might have chosen to wear for the occasion, but at least it fit. Harry, too, changed into better fitting robes before they dumped the rest of their Veritaserum down Charlie's gullet and set off via time turner again.

They returned Charlie to his own time and presented him, a note pinned to his chest, to an Auror, who they then oblivated to have never seen them. They could only hope that the note contained the proper questions to help the Auror office in 2012 lock him up in Azkaban for the rest of his life. They had taken his time turner and smashed it into a million pieces before using their own to return to 2001.

They had chosen to time travel in and out of the Shrieking Shack; as it was the one place that they could be relatively certain of not being intruded upon. They ventured out of the shack timidly when they got their bearings in their own time. Hogsmeade rose in the distance; the businesses of High Street all looking as though they should.

Time was fixed; they were sure of it. They brought their own time turner with them as far as Diagon Alley; where they had decided they might best be able to gauge the 'correctness' of the time they had returned to. They had agreed to destroy their own time turner as soon as they were sure that things were back to normal.

Diagon Alley seemed normal enough as Harry and Ginny entered through the alley behind the Leaky Cauldron. There were no giant silver dragons or mentions of Her Royal Majesty; so that was at least a good sign. They made their way quietly down the alley, taking mental inventory of the shops and cafes as they went. Everything seemed in order, but there was still no way to be sure. Harry had thought again to try and see a newspaper, and they were headed to a newsstand when Ginny spotted a familiar face.

"Professor Lynch!" Ginny called, pulling Harry by the arm toward the young woman standing near the door to Quality Quidditch Supplies. The professor smiled and waved.

"Miss Weasley!" she called back.

"She knows me," Ginny whispered to Harry, "that's a good sign." Ginny approached the redder-haired young woman. She was bouncing a baby on her hip and chatting with the girl Harry remembered having been flirting with Draco Malfoy after the Quidditch exhibition.

"Good afternoon," the professor greeted Ginny as they approached. "Mr. Potter," she added by way of acknowledging her recognition of Harry.

"Is she yours?" Ginny asked the professor, waving to the little girl in her arms. Professor Lynch shook her head and chuckled.

"No, no," she answered. "This is Emily's future sister-in-law." She winked at the other girl who was standing with her.

"Orinda, I tell you…" Emily chided, "He's not proposed to me."

"Emily," Orinda exhorted, "that lad tells me everything and I know for a fact that he's been sniffing around your friends and your cousins asking about what kind of ring you'd like. He's going to propose."

"But this is Lilith," Emily addressed Ginny, who was still interacting with the baby. "Can you tell her your name?" she asked the baby.

"We're trying to get her to say her full name," Orinda explained. "She's just learning to talk," she added.

"Tell her your name," Emily insisted to the little girl. "Lilith," she said, and then waited for the child to repeat, which she did with some small success. "Andromeda," Emily said next. The baby barely made a similar sound, but seemed pleased with herself for having made a two syllable word from a four syllable one. "Calpurnia," Emily said slower. Lilith made a convincing 'P' sound, but very little else that sounded like her name. "Malfoy," Emily finished, the baby repeating her last name almost perfectly. Orinda kissed the child on the top of the head as Ginny and Emily cheered along with a laughing Lilith.

Malfoy…? How had Harry not made the connection? This little girl looked like a miniature copy of Narcissa Malfoy; almost exactly like the photo that had been attached to Narcissa's birth announcement that they had seen in the Black family album.

"I thought…" Harry injected. Narcissa Malfoy had been pregnant at the Quidditch exhibition, he was sure of that. And if this little girl was hers… the timeline might not be corrected after all. "I thought the Malfoys were…." There was no delicate way of putting what he was trying to get across.

"Expecting another one?" Orinda injected, obviously aware of Harry's discomfort at the subject. Harry nodded.

"You're quite right about that," Emily affirmed. "Likely by the time the sun gets down if the pain she had back at Hogwarts was any indication."

"Aye," Orinda added, "and it's the nanny's afternoon off; isn't that always the way? So we offered to bring Lilith with us."

"Draco spoils her more than her mum and dad, if you'd believe that," Emily asserted. They had a hard time picturing Draco Malfoy doting on an infant and Harry had to fight the urge to laugh at the prospect.

"I think it was his ploy all along to get her a toy broomstick today," Orinda added. She looked directly at Ginny and nodded once. "The match went really well," she said. "The Malfoys have agreed to buy us whatever we need for the program. We came to place the order for the broomsticks."

"That's wonderful!" Ginny exclaimed. Harry wasn't sure whether she was really so happy about the development in the Hogwarts Quidditch program or that this news was perfectly fitting with the timeline that they were hoping to have emerged into. Truly, Ginny was happy about both.

"It really is," Orinda agreed. "But, of course, we can't go in to anyplace where there are broomsticks without inciting a riot between my husband and this one's brother. I'll be surprised if it doesn't come to wands."

"Over broomsticks?" Ginny asked. She knew Draco Malfoy to be a hot headed little git, but the idea of a real fight over something having to do with a broomstick.

"Aye," Orinda answered, rolling her eyes. "Aiden swears on the Firebilt by Firebolt, and Draco is a confirmed disciple of the Nimbus 3000. Now, I'm buying Comet 990's for the school; but that doesn't stop the two of them from getting into a hefty enough debate that they missed Lilith here climbing up onto a shelf to sit on the Cleansweep sixteen and almost take off."

"Oh dear," Ginny frowned at the thought of a child that small on a full size racing broom inside of a shop.

"Exactly," Orinda affirmed. "So we brought her out here and gave her a licorice wand and Draco has promised her a toy broomstick if she's good."

"Which is code," Emily inserted, "for he's buying her one no matter what and she can have it the next time she throws a fit."

"Sounds like Malfoy," Harry groaned. If that had been the way Draco had been raised; rewarded for misbehavior, that explained a great deal about his personality.

"Don't be too hard on him," Orinda offered. "He was an only child for twenty years," she reminded them. "And in the course of less than one he's getting two baby sisters. It's a little bit of a sore spot for him; I'm surely shocked that he's not hateful toward her."

"How could anyone be hateful to such a precious baby?" Ginny asked. She didn't care that this little one was a Malfoy, she was the most beautiful baby Ginny had ever seen and she was more than happy to play with the little girl. Ginny couldn't imagine anyone, even Draco Malfoy, not falling in love with this tiny beauty.

"Have you met Malfoy?" Harry asked his fiancée. If she thought about it for a minute, Harry was sure that she would have easily been able to imagine him being jealous of a younger sibling; even if there was twenty years between them. Emily giggled at Harry's comment and Orinda was apparently trying to suppress a chuckle; apparently they knew him well enough to agree with Harry's supposition.

"Touché," Emily said back to him.

"Ginevra Molly Weasley!" a harsh feminine voice called from inside the store. Shayla Bryant, a stocky brown haired girl who played beater for the Harpies came tearing out of the door and snatched Ginny by the hand. "Gwenog was about ready to send out a search party!" Shayla exclaimed.

"The autograph signing!" Ginny remembered suddenly. She had completely forgotten! If there was any proof of the return of the timeline to its proper state, that had been it. Ginny was still expected at Quality Quidditch Supplies with her fellow Holyhead Harpies. She looked at Harry, smiling as broadly as she fought the urge to cry.

Harry smiled back at her. This was a very good sign, indeed. He recognized Shayla, Orinda and Emily looked the same and were wearing the same clothes they'd been wearing at the Quidditch Exhibition, and Ginny was expected to get back into her uniform and hurry in to sign autographs.

"Shayla," Orinda addressed the newest arrival. "You tell Gwenog to keep her knickers on or I'll remember her tantrum next time I officiate her team."

"You wouldn't," Shayla accused. Orinda shrugged her shoulders.

"Even the best of us officials miss a call every once in a while," she defended, sounding as though she could not only do what she suggested, but get away with it, too. Harry suddenly understood why Orinda had been assigned to Slytherin when she had come to Hogwarts as a teaching assistant during his years at school. And he also understood by that comment just how she could be such close friends with Malfoy. Shayla Bryant, for her part, stormed off in a huff, grumbling under her breath.

Ginny chuckled and shook her head. She began trying to reclaim her finger from Lilith, who had just discovered that it was the perfect size for her to grip. "I should go," Ginny said to the group of them. "Harry, you were going to check in at the office?" she asked. Harry nodded. There were still a few things he wanted to do to insure that they had returned to time as they knew it; and the Auror office would be a good place to start.

"Yeah," he affirmed.

"I'll see you after, then," she said to him. She turned back to Orinda and Emily, "I'm glad things went so well today. Give Mrs. Malfoy our best," she added.

"Yes, please," Harry agreed. He hadn't even thought about that; but Ginny was right to send her well wishes under the circumstances. She had now technically saved his life twice. Ginny took a step away from the group and toward the door of the shop.

"I'm late," she told them. Orinda shook her head and waved to Ginny in such a way as Lilith followed suit.

"I think you'll find," the professor countered, "that you're right on time."

Ginny sighed. She was, at that.

-FIN

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AAH- all better now. The timeline is all fixed. For those of you who've asked; the 13th Hourglass was the name of a band my dad played with in High School and I thought it an appropriate title for a story in which time was askew. More fiction will be forthcoming. I have a short story to finish and then there will be a fluffy oneshot and then... who knows...? THANKS to Peevesthepoltergeist and others who have been so kind as to review regularly and I can't wait to hear opinions of the story as a whole. Cheers!

-MQ


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